My days, my years, my life has seen up and downs, lights and darknesses. If I wrote only and continually of the ‚light‘ and never mentioned the other, then as an artist, I would be a liar.

A record deal doesn’t make you an artist; you make yourself an artist.

What is my life if I am no longer useful to others.

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

The first thing which I can record concerning myself is, that I was born. These are wonderful words. This life, to which neither time nor eternity can bring diminution – this everlasting living soul, began. My mind loses itself in these depths.

A person should not be too honest. Straight trees are cut first and honest people are screwed first.

I performed in a bowling alley before while people were still bowling. Cut the check, and I will perform anywhere.

They are resilient children, but they are children, and as much as they need help to understand the hard truths in life, they also need what we all need – protection and love.

I’m more of a realist when it comes to life, and I’d much rather my mother be in a spiritual place in Heaven than in a bed, sick, fighting for her life.

Live truth instead of professing it.

Sometimes I think it would be easier to avoid old age, to die young, but then you’d never complete your life, would you? You’d never wholly know you.

For me, writing has always come out of living a fairly to-the-bone kind of life, just really being present to a lot of life. The writing has been really a byproduct of that.

There are many times when a woman will ask another girl friend how she likes her new hat. She will reply, ‚Fine,‘ but slap her hand to her forehead the minute the girl leaves to yipe, ‚What a horror!‘

The spiritual is the parent of the practical.

I really like hip-hop and rap; that’s my main influence. I really wanna be more of a hip-hop artist.

Satisfaction consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of life.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.

Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.

A ‚No‘ uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a ‚Yes‘ merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.

One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.

We can be thankful to a friend for a few acres, or a little money; and yet for the freedom and command of the whole earth, and for the great benefits of our being, our life, health, and reason, we look upon ourselves as under no obligation.

A true artist is expected to be all that is noble-minded, and this is not altogether a mistake; on the other hand, however, in what a mean way are critics allowed to pounce upon us.

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.

Live your life while you have it. Life is a splendid gift. There is nothing small in it. Far the greatest things grow by God’s law out of the smallest. But to live your life, you must discipline it.

I mean… in life… what relationship is easy?

Quacks are a part of our culture, and we all fall prey to them. Who among us can say, for sure, that even our own personal physicians are honest and competent?

I am an artist, and I have the ability and the free will to choose the way the world will envision me.

Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that’s how we’ve got to live.

He not busy being born is busy dying.

Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.

Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.

The great end of life is not knowledge but action.

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.

Thou know’st the first time that we smell the air we wawl and cry. When we are born we cry, that we are come to this great state of fools.

You know, my family and friends have never been yes-men: ‚Yes, you’re doing the right thing, you’re always right.‘ No, they tell me when I’m wrong, and that’s why I’ve been able to stay who I am and stay humble.

Life is a dead-end street.

The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.

I don’t care if people think I am an overactor, as long as they enjoy what I do. People who think that would call Van Gogh an overpainter.

It is a fine thing to be honest, but it is also very important to be right.

Even with all the advantages of retrospect, and a lot of witnesses dead and gone, you can’t make your life look as if you intended it or you were consistent. All you can show is how you dealt with various hands.

Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more.

Of life’s two chief prizes, beauty and truth, I found the first in a loving heart and the second in a laborer’s hand.

The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.

It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.

Growing old has been the greatest surprise of my life.

I have rules for a lot of areas of my life. Love is not going to be one of them.

If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it.

I think what’s important is for us to decipher what is honest and what is dishonest and be accepting of those things and not operating from fear.

In order that all men may be taught to speak the truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.

My friends ask me if I want more kids, and I always say yes, I want more; it’s the best thing you can have in your life.

Life was always a matter of waiting for the right moment to act.

The income tax has made liars out of more Americans than golf.

Whatever fortune has raised to a height, she has raised only to cast it down.

Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.

The major value in life is not what you get. The major value in life is what you become.

The art of living well and the art of dying well are one.

Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books.

There is no love of life without despair of life.