My fans saw me get engaged, saw me make that woman my wife, me having kids, me divorcing, me talking about divorce before the divorce, me talking about my kids‘ reaction to that divorce.

My parents taught me service – not by saying, but by doing. That was my culture, the culture of my family.

Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.

A lot of people tell me a lot of things about my conduct, my game, my future… but I try to stay away from their words of wisdom. I don’t let it distract me. On the field, you will be facing the ball alone. If you fail, you will the only one to blame. So, you should be the one deciding for yourself.

If selfishness is the key to being miserable, then selflessness must be the key to being happy!

There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect.

Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.

A good leader can engage in a debate frankly and thoroughly, knowing that at the end he and the other side must be closer, and thus emerge stronger. You don’t have that idea when you are arrogant, superficial, and uninformed.

My family wasn’t rich, so when it comes to money, I tend to think, ‚Err on the side of caution.‘

I grew up in an environment where being polite was taken as a weakness. So I just fought everybody.

Friendship… is not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.

I’m mortified to be on the stage, but then again, it’s the only place where I’m happy.

I sang a song at my sister’s wedding. My mother forced me into that, too. But that one felt all right.

President Assad, I worked with. I know him reasonably well, met with him a few times, and he’s a liar.

In my younger days, I was trying to write sophisticated prose and fantastic stories.

Early on in my life, I had a broken soul. I was abused by my father, abandoned by my mother and ended up in a destructive first marriage. By the time I was 23, I was broken in my soul. I didn’t know how to think right. I felt wrong about everything. But God stepped into my life, and I came out on the other side and didn’t even smell like smoke.

There is such a thing as old emotional pain living inside you. It is an accumulation of painful life experience that was not fully faced and accepted in the moment it arose. It leaves behind an energy form of emotional pain.

I fear that many a man’s good resolutions only need the ordinary fire of daily life to make them melt away. So, too, with fine professions and the boastings of perfection which abound in this age of shams.

One time, this guy was bothering my mother, and me and my brothers had a stern talking with the guy and a little bit of physicality with him. So he disappeared. But I’m not a magician.

I’ve always felt heroic about my life… As a child, I remember little girls in the playground moaning about how boys could do more than they could. I didn’t think that was the case at all. My parents didn’t treat me as a girl.

Conscious of not being able to separate myself from my time, I have decided to become part of it.

Engage your brain before you engage your weapon.

Money does not change people, people change.

I never want to change so much that people can’t recognize me.

Had I been a great athlete, I’m not sure I would have even gone into coaching. I may have turned out feeling that my life ended when my athletic career ended, as happens so many times with various athletes.

No matter what, I always make it home for Christmas. I love to go to my Tennessee Mountain Home and invite all of my nieces and nephews and their spouses and kids and do what we all like to do – eat, laugh, trade presents and just enjoy each other… and sometimes I even dress up like Santa Claus!

Really, who you are is defined by the people who you know – not even the people that you know, but the people you spend time with and the people that you love and the people that you work with. I guess we show your friends in your profile, but that’s kind of different from the information you put in your profile.

My grandfather once ventured upon publishing a volume of hymns. I never heard anyone speak in their favour or argue that they ought to have been sung in the congregation. In that volume, he promised a second if the first should prove acceptable. We forgive him the first collection because he did not inflict another.

As a father, I always want my son to be perfect. When he was young, I tried to train him in martial arts, but he said, ‚I don’t want to become like Bruce Lee’s son, with everybody telling me how good my father was.‘ I just think my son is too lazy.

I continue to care for President Obama and for his family. I think that in many ways they are very courageous people, and I honor that, because I know what it means to live as a black person in a racist America.

What starts the process, really, are laughs and slights and snubs when you are a kid. If your anger is deep enough and strong enough, you learn that you can change those attitudes by excellence, personal gut performance.

I can’t deal with someone wanting to take a relationship backward or needing space or cheating on you.

My entire childhood was steeped in poverty. For me, poverty, in a way, was the first inspiration of my life, a commitment to do something for the poor.

The reason that I’m here at all is because of my relationship with my family and their encouragement of me to be a musician and to work hard. As long as I stay there in that space, I can do anything. That’s my truth.

I don’t have any regrets. I made all my own decisions.

Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children.

I’ve been called a recluse. There’s definitely truth in that. I like to spend time alone.

Whenever you are angry, be assured that it is not only a present evil, but that you have increased a habit.

Someday I want to have children and give them all the love I never had.

Adults are obsolete children.

If thy brother wrongs thee, remember not so much his wrong-doing, but more than ever that he is thy brother.

There isn’t any formula or method. You learn to love by loving – by paying attention and doing what one thereby discovers has to be done.

All that the future holds in store for each sacred child of God will be shaped by his or her parents, family, friends, and teachers. Thus, our faith now becomes part of our posterity’s faith later.

When a father puts in long hours at work, he’s praised for being dedicated and ambitious. But when a mother stays late at the office, she’s sometimes accused of being selfish, neglecting her kids.

I was becoming post-ideological.

I don’t want to be too critical of what other people do, but when people go back to do the same thing that they did, I’m completely confused. I’m like, ‚Didn’t you make that movie already?‘ I’ve been very fortunate, and I’m well taken care of, so the least I can do is try to go forward.

When your higher self is present, it always promotes peace.

If you don’t like how things are, change it! You’re not a tree.

I’m an introvert somewhat. There could be a room full of people, I’ll go stand in the corner.

My mom is very religious – Catholic – and from a young age they brought me to the church.

Everything is clearer when you’re in love.

The fame thing is interesting because I never wanted to be famous, and I never dreamt I would be famous.

When you have good friends you’ve been around, every time they talk, you don’t give them your full attention. You don’t look them in the eye and stop. Half the time, you’re listening, half the time, you are ignoring them.

Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.

It is better to be deceived by one’s friends than to deceive them.

The hardest thing for – not only an artist but for anybody to do is look themselves in the mirror and acknowledge, you know, their own flaws and fears and imperfections and put them out there in the open for people to relate to it.

The best teacher is very interactive.

I believe a marriage is between a man and a woman.

Adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is most beneficial to us.