One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.

No one can give you better advice than yourself.

Since I have come to America, I am often asked whether my next novel will be set in America. I don’t think it will. I think I will be living in America for some time to come, but while living in America, I would like to write about Japanese society from the outside.

It’s always appealing to play a character that has to overcome himself as well as an obstacle. It makes the drama so much deeper.

I think that people just have this core desire to express who they are. And I think that’s always existed.

Follow your honest convictions and be strong.

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

I hope not to define myself by suffering.

Growing old has been the greatest surprise of my life.

So let’s be honest with ourselves and not take ourselves too serious, and never condemn the other fellow for doing what we are doing every day, only in a different way.

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

I mean… in life… what relationship is easy?

One thing that writers have in common is that they are readers first. They have read lots and lots of stuff, because they’re just infested with lots of stuff.

I don’t control my writing – it controls me.

We represent a hustler. I think we represent inspiration. I think we represent, you know, staying down. I think we represent building yourself up from the bootstraps.

If you tell people where to go, but not how to get there, you’ll be amazed at the results.

We should every night call ourselves to an account: what infirmity have I mastered today? what passions opposed? what temptation resisted? what virtue acquired? Our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.

I know this sounds strange, but as a kid, I was really shy. Painfully shy. The turning point was freshman year, when I was the biggest geek alive. No one, I mean no one, even talked to me.

Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress.

When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isn’t a man of action. Action is a lack of balance. In order to act you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking.

Sometimes, you might meet somebody that you love that’s turning into a ‚they.‘ My key is invite them to Miami and take them to the ocean and let them jump off the boat in the ocean, on the sand bar, and cleanse off and pray and then go take a shower, and hopefully the ‚they‘ is out of you.

I was a kind of hyper-intense person in my twenties and very impatient.

I’m never going to go to Mars, but I’ve helped inspire, thank goodness, the people who built the rockets and sent our photographic equipment off to Mars.

Every man’s memory is his private literature.

What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

At one point I learned transcendental meditation. This was 30-something years ago. It took me back to the way that I naturally was as a child growing up way in the country, rarely seeing people. I was in that state of oneness with creation and it was as if I didn’t exist except as a part of everything.

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

If someone you know makes a bad decision or uses bad judgment, it doesn’t mean you have to allow that to alter your attitude. Why should you allow anyone else’s bad decisions to send you into a tailspin of misery?

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 dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.

To me, the most important artists in my career are Arcangel and Balvin. Arcangel gave me the push, the respect in the streets.

I don’t know what drives me to succeed.

No sanction can stand against ignited minds.

People ask me where I got my singing style. I didn’t copy my style from anybody.

Your Highest Self is not just an idea that sounds lofty and spiritual. It is a way of being. It is the very first principle that you must come to understand and embrace as you move toward attracting to you that which you want and need for this parenthesis in eternity that you know as your life.

My whole life is a theater piece.

Lots of songs aren’t even from my experiences, but they’re about accepting… the dark things about yourself.

For me, ‚risky‘ is revealing what really happened in my life through music. Risky is writing confessional songs and telling the true story about a person with enough details so everyone knows who that person is.

Every human being is under construction from conception to death.

Independence? That’s middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.

I was so rude when I was a little girl.

Democratic societies are unfit for the publication of such thunderous revelations as I am in the habit of making.

Never take anything for granted.

I think that society has to be careful not to shift all of its resources to the elderly versus the young.

I think it’s my responsibility, as a person of influence… to sometimes try to do what I can.

Precepts or maxims are of great weight; and a few useful ones on hand do more to produce a happy life than the volumes we can’t find.

Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.

In this constant battle which we call living, we try to set a code of conduct according to the society in which we are brought up, whether it be a Communist society or a so-called free society; we accept a standard of behaviour as part of our tradition as Hindus or Muslims or Christians or whatever we happen to be.

The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible.

I had a really good childhood up until I was nine, then a classic case of divorce really affected me.

A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar.

If you don’t know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.

As I followed my dream – stayed in-Spirit, that is, inspired – I made more money in the first year after I gave up my employment than I had made in the previous 35 years of my life.

A man is born alone and dies alone; and he experiences the good and bad consequences of his karma alone; and he goes alone to hell or the Supreme abode.

The Bible tells us to be perfect. This is likely a scary thought for many people. It used to scare me. I didn’t think I could ever get there, no matter how hard I tried.

Ambition has become a dirty word, and I believe it is a great evolutionary force for the positive. If people fail or go astray in their ambition I can live with it but not with people lowering their expectations, wasting time, slacking off and glorifying failure and stupidity.

All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind.

Anything you put your mind to and add your imagination into can make your life a lot better and a lot more fun.

Your timeless self does not age and has no fear of the future. Contemplate your physical self and all its possessions, and practice laughing peacefully at it all.