My mother did not like children.

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.

My mother was a powerful influence. She made me toe the line. If I didn’t have a perfect report card, she showed her disappointment.

Friends are thieves of time.

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‚I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.‘

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.

My grandmother used to embarrass me more, when she would pick me up from school wearing a big fuzzy hat. I didn’t like that.

There’s nothing better than having a baby. I’ve always loved children. I used to work summers at the YMCA and be in charge of, like, 30 preschool kids. I knew that when I had a child, I’d be overwhelmed, and it’s true… I can’t tell you how much my attitude has changed since we’ve got Frances. Holding my baby is the best drug in the world.

My parents were the same in the pulpit as they were at home. I think that’s where a lot of preachers‘ kids get off base sometimes. Because they don’t see the same things at both places.

A letdown is worth a few songs. A heartbreak is worth a few albums.

Your attitude towards failure determines your altitude after failure.

I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.

Secretly we’re all a little more absurd than we make ourselves out to be.

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.

I have so much in my life. I want to be of value to the world.

My philosophy is it’s none of my business what people say of me and think of me. I am what I am, and I do what I do. I expect nothing and accept everything. And it makes life so much easier.

We cannot learn men from books.

It is only to the individual that a soul is given.

All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning.

All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.

Let each know that for each the body, the mind and the soul have been freed to fulfill themselves.

It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have everything one wants.

I vividly remember a conversation I had many years ago in 1974, which marked a turning point in my leadership journey. I was sitting at a Holiday Inn with my friend, Kurt Campmeyer, when he asked me if I had a personal growth plan. I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even know you were supposed to have one.

My overall look on things is a lot more mature than it used to be.

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

I think that you can love people without it being the great love.

I am a child but I have to think and act like a woman, this business forces you to.

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.

To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others.

If you haven’t forgiven yourself something, how can you forgive others.

At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures – be what he is. And, above all, accept these things.

Maybe there is no actual place called hell. Maybe hell is just having to listen to our grandparents breathe through their noses when they’re eating sandwiches.

I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one. And I’m still fanatical, but now I’m a little less fanatical.

I find with most of my readers are kind of like me, sort of people who were a little bit naive in life and then learned the hard way that this is what’s going on, the political games and most of my readers write to me telling me that the book helped them open their eyes to what other people are doing to them.

The innocence of childhood is like the innocence of a lot of animals.

It’s always wonderful to get to know women, with the mystery and the joy and the depth. If you can make a woman laugh, you’re seeing the most beautiful thing on God’s Earth.

As much as it might look like, to someone else, that I’m successful, I never feel like I’m anywhere. The further I go, I still feel equally further from my eventual goal. Because as I grow, I get more goals. I’m never content.

My goal is just to be respected as a man when I walk down the street with my family. I don’t care what your job is, you’re not gonna talk down to me, you’re not gonna try to get a rise out of me. I’m a man first. And in establishing that, some interesting things have happened.

The mind is everything. What you think you become.

There are three methods to gaining wisdom. The first is reflection, which is the highest. The second is limitation, which is the easiest. The third is experience, which is the bitterest.

It’s getting harder to make decisions to just want to do something to work… I’m trying to find things that are extremely challenging or mean something to me deeply.

I had to come from something, come from a place that was negative and positive but the majority of it is a negative place.

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.

Marriage is a series of desperate arguments people feel passionately about.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Marriage is a school itself. Also, having children. Becoming a father changed my whole life. It taught me as if by revelation.

My reputation grows with every failure.

When you stop caring what people think, you lose your capacity for connection. When you’re defined by it, you lose our capacity for vulnerability.

You get one life. I’m going to embrace mine.

Remember you are just an extra in everyone else’s play.

I was very blessed to have family and friends, but particularly family, who told me I was not only all right, I was just right, so I believe that my brain is a good one, and it’s lasting me very well.

A friend is one soul abiding in two bodies.

Don’t get older just to get wiser. If you get older, you will be wiser, I believe that – if you dare. But get older because it’s fun!

So many people live with anger and unforgiveness, and many of them are Christians.

Never do things others can do and will do if there are things others cannot do or will not do.

To become ‚unique,‘ the challenge is to fight the hardest battle which anyone can imagine until you reach your destination.

People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.

I stopped doing drugs when I was 20. I was finished with drugs before Nirvana even started.

Marriage is this grand madness, and I think if people knew that, they would perhaps take it more seriously.

What it’s like to be me? You know, it’s good to be me. My life is good.

It’s none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.