Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

I want to grow old without facelifts. I want to have the courage to be loyal to the face I have made.

I looked the people of Louisiana in the eye and told them exactly what I thought in terms that normal people use.

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.

That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.

Like Frank Sinatra, I’m doing it my way.

I guess I wanted to leave America for awhile. It wasn’t that I wanted to become an expatriate, or just never come back, I needed some breathing room. I’d already been translating French poetry, I’d been to Paris once before and liked it very much, and so I just went.

Self-knowledge comes from knowing other men.

Anyone who has declared someone else to be an idiot, a bad apple, is annoyed when it turns out in the end that he isn’t.

I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.

Every day we have plenty of opportunities to get angry, stressed or offended. But what you’re doing when you indulge these negative emotions is giving something outside yourself power over your happiness. You can choose to not let little things upset you.

I have an existential map. It has ‚You are here‘ written all over it.

I learned that very often the most intolerant and narrow-minded people are the ones who congratulate themselves on their tolerance and open-mindedness.

Vanity is the healthiest thing in life.

I always liked different things, rare things.

I learned to fly a few years ago in England. It’s the only place I’m completely alone – up in the air, detached from everything.

If it’s going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You’re on your own, and you know what you know. And you are the guy who’ll decide where to go.

Man needs his difficulties because they are necessary to enjoy success.

I think I write in a fairly self-confident manner.

I imagine I will be less involved in film and be focused more on family and foreign affairs.

I have survivor’s curiosity, I guess.

We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans – because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That’s why we paint, that’s why we dare to love someone – because we have the impulse to explain who we are.

If there are people you haven’t forgiven, you’re not going to really awaken. You have to let go.

When you get to a place where you understand that love and belonging, your worthiness, is a birthright and not something you have to earn, anything is possible.

If I’m inspired to make a certain kind of song, I’m going to make that kind of song, no matter if it’s what they know me as or think I am.

I’ve never been a boyfriend kind of girl.

It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five.

While children are struggling to be unique, the world around them is trying all means to make them look like everybody else.

Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.

I don’t feel very comfortable defending my fashion except to say that people don’t have to buy it. You do have to consume. You have to live. If you’ve got the money to be able to afford it, then it’s really good to buy something from me, but don’t buy too much.

To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.

Always fall in with what you’re asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way. My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever’s going. Not against: with.

There are going to be things I’m not going to be great at, times when I make mistakes, 100%.

The devil is a peace stealer, and he works hard to set us up to get upset. But we can learn how to change our approach so we don’t live upset all of the time. And Jesus gives us the best example to follow.

You have to be smart. The easy days are over.

I think everyone’s inherently snobbish. Things that are very popular are not taken seriously, because the snobbish side of one says, ‚Well, if everyone likes it it can’t be that good.‘ Whereas if only I and a couple of other people like it, then it must be really something special.

A person who is truly authentic doesn’t need to play a role in life, we think, but can simply be him – or herself.

I was brought up to believe that the worst thing you could do was ‚call attention to yourself,‘ or ‚think you were smart.‘ My mother was an exception to this rule and was punished by the early onset of Parkinson’s disease.

In order to heal others, we first need to heal ourselves. And to heal ourselves, we need to know how to deal with ourselves.

Questioning my spiritual life has always been germane to what I was writing. Always. It’s because I’m not quite an atheist and it worries me. There’s that little bit that holds on: ‚Well, I’m almost an atheist. Give me a couple of months.‘

They’re right to think that about me, because I’m the person most likely to sleep with my female fans, I genuinely love other women. And I think they know that.

My writing is jagged and harsh, I want it to remain that way; I don’t want it smoothed out.

A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others.

You pay a certain penalty for going your own way. A lot of people think you’re nuts, and you’re not as popular with girls as you should be.

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

I’m concerned that my technical skills have advanced to the point where I can get closer to what I’m aiming for, which is not such a good thing.

To refrain from imitation is the best revenge.

I let the American people down.

I’d rather tell you how I really feel.

I’ve made my share of mistakes along the way, but if I have changed even one life for the better, I haven’t lived in vain.

No one wants to see curvy women.

There’s no point in saying anything but the truth.

At one time, I was very angry. I even treated fashion like a kind of crusade: you were either with us or against us, that kind of feeling. Now I know we need ideas, not kicking down a door.

Few men would dare to read their own autobiography if all their deeds were recorded in it; few can look back upon their entire career without a blush.

I felt I had to solve everyone’s problems.

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.

When I was in college I did a lot of stupid things and I don’t want to make an excuse for that. Some of the things that people accuse me of are true, some of them aren’t. There are pranks, IMs.

It’s like a jar of salad dressing sitting on a shelf… most of the seasoning settles to the bottom of the bottle. But when you shake that bottle up, all the ingredients mix together and then the dressing can add flavor to a salad. In the same way, we can stir ourselves up and regain the reverence, respect and awe we once had for the Lord.

It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.

I don’t want to be alone, I want to be left alone.