My father probably thought the capital of the world was wherever he was at the time. It couldn’t possibly be anyplace else. Where he and his wife were in their own home, that, for them, was the capital of the world.

To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

He who knows best knows how little he knows.

Either you’re the one erasing or you’re the one being erased.

It is very important to generate a good attitude, a good heart, as much as possible. From this, happiness in both the short term and the long term for both yourself and others will come.

To add value to others, one must first value others.

When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.

It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.

If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.

The mind of a 19-year-old is very different from the mind of a 26-year-old. You grow. You get into better relationships. You experience more, meet more people, better people. But when you’re in a dark hole at an earlier point in your life – you write about the mindset you’re in at that moment.

The difficulties you meet will resolve themselves as you advance. Proceed, and light will dawn, and shine with increasing clearness on your path.

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.

I still make sure to go, at least once every year, to a country where things cannot be taken for granted, and where there is either too much law and order or too little.

When I was a boy we didn’t wake up with Vietnam and have Cyprus for lunch and the Congo for dinner.

All wrong-doing arises because of mind. If mind is transformed can wrong-doing remain?

I know that I’m not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don’t know how not to.

Christmas morning, I’m going to open presents with my kids. I’m going to take pictures of them opening the presents. Then I’m going to come to the Staples Center and get ready to work.

Is everything funny? For me, yes. There’s a positive to every negative. Even my divorce? For me, yes. If you go back and look at it, why it happened or how it happened, there’s something in there that’ll make you laugh.

Choose people who lift you up.

What do I think of Western civilization? I think it would be a very good idea.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

As soon go kindle fire with snow, as seek to quench the fire of love with words.

Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.

I let people fill in the blanks on their own. If they want to think about their ex, that’s fine. If they want to think about maybe who one of my exes is, then that’s fine. And it might not be right, because I’m the only one who knows what these songs are really about. It’s the one shred of privacy I have in the matter.

Love other human beings as you would love yourself.

There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.

If you change and adapt your persona, you are seen as inauthentic; if you stay the angry young man, you fade from attention or seem tiresome.

We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love – first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.

The eyes are more exact witnesses than the ears.

In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because it is excessively discussed.

I don’t think I’m such an amazing person who needs to be written about.

Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.

We all know we have a finite period of time. I just feel if I’m going to be alive, I want to be challenged – to be as immortal as possible. The path to that isn’t an easy way, but it’s a rewarding way.

Not what we have But what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.

The question of whether or not there is a God or truth or reality or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by books, by priests, philosopher’s or saviours. Nobody and nothing can answer the question but you yourself, and that is why you must know yourself – Immaturity lies only in total ignorance of self.

People may think I’m trying something new by telling stories, but they’re just jokes connected to give the illusion of stories. But really, I just continue using my imagination and creating. That’s what I do.

I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized, and I still had a daughter who I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

I think there is a lot made out of age, and what age you feel.

If you realize all the time what’s kind of wonderful – that is, if we expand our experience into wilder and wilder regions of experience – every once in a while, we have these integrations when everything’s pulled together into a unification, in which it turns out to be simpler than it looked before.

You will find as you grow older that courage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public life.

To be able to look back upon ones life in satisfaction, is to live twice.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

I would impress upon your minds the fact that if you want to do a man justice, you should believe what a man says himself rather than what people say he says.

Every time you think the problem is ‚out there,‘ that very thought is the problem.

My father used to have an expression. He’d say, ‚Joey, a job is about a lot more than a paycheck. It’s about your dignity. It’s about respect. It’s about your place in your community.‘

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others‘ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.

I must govern the clock, not be governed by it.

Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.

If a man could have half of his wishes, he would double his troubles.

When I’m writing, I don’t feel neurotic. So it’s better for the family if I’m working.

I would like to fly in space. Absolutely. That would be cool. I used to just do personally risky things, but now I’ve got kids and responsibilities, so I can’t be my own test pilot. That wouldn’t be a good idea. But I definitely want to fly as soon as it’s a sensible thing to do.

I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library.

There is always the danger that we may just do the work for the sake of the work. This is where the respect and the love and the devotion come in – that we do it to God, to Christ, and that’s why we try to do it as beautifully as possible.

Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.

It is clear to everyone that astronomy at all events compels the soul to look upwards, and draws it from the things of this world to the other.

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.

Truths and roses have thorns about them.

Not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them.

We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.

I love the attention but I don’t like too much of it.