One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

None of the records I make are ever a deliberate construction – they’re always an expression of who I am at the time and where I am in my life.

I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

Every seven years, I sit down and make a whole new plan.

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

By the time you get dressed, drive out there, play 18 holes and come home, you’ve blown seven hours. There are better things you can do with your time.

I don’t write so much now. I’m getting on 33, pot belly and creeping dementia.

Philosophy: Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.

Sometimes I write stuff that strangely predicts what’s going to happen in my life.

Around every corner, always protect the engine that powers you.

The Mind that lies fallow but a single Day, sprouts up in Follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous Culture.

You can be obsessed with the bad things people say and the good things; either way, you’re obsessed with yourself, and I’m not – you can become unhinged so easily.

As long as your body is healthy and under control and death is distant, try to save your soul; when death is immanent what can you do?

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy.

It’s much worse to read criticism about your son than yourself.

Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.

We hear only those questions for which we are in a position to find answers.

Just remember, you can’t climb the ladder of success with your hands in your pockets.

Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.

Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides.

Modesty is not only an ornament, but also a guard to virtue.

The way of the Creative works through change and transformation, so that each thing receives its true nature and destiny and comes into permanent accord with the Great Harmony: this is what furthers and what perseveres.

I don’t see how people are comfortable with seeing other people be great. You can be happy for anybody, but what is your excuse to not want to be great? These people are great because they just say, ‚I’ma do that,‘ and they do it. That’s it. There’s no scientifical process.

I really have no interest in myself.

It is our choices… that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire, called conscience.

If I had a talent, it was for looking askew at everything, possibly more than my contemporaries. But I had to really push myself to be a writer.

It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.

The best of us must sometimes eat our words.

To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one’s being added to that being.

Follow your honest convictions and be strong.

My philosophy is: It’s none of my business what people say of me and think of me.

We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.

I’m nobody, who are you?

Sometimes we be playing the politics too much and forget who we are just to win.

When you love and accept yourself, when you know who really cares about you, and when you learn from your mistakes, then you stop caring about what people who don’t know you think.

Sometimes I’ve called writing a disease. If so, I’m glad that it caught me.

There are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, ‚That person I see is a savage monster;‘ instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do.

I try to sprinkle a little gems and jewels in the music that people could use in their own life.

Wishful thinking is not idealism. It is self-indulgence at best and self-exaltation at worst. In either case, it is usually at the expense of others. In other words, it is the opposite of idealism.

A lie cannot live.

To err is human; to forgive, divine.

It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself.

The display of grief makes more demands than grief itself. How few men are sad in their own company.

In assisting his ‚neighbour‘ every day to the best of his ability, and keeping truth, honesty, and kindness perpetually before him, the Boy Scout, with as little formality as possible, is pleasing God.

My purpose is to help people look at themselves and begin to shift their concepts. Remember, we are not our country, our race, or religion. We are eternal spirits. Seeing ourselves as spiritual beings without label is a way to transform the world and reach a sacred place for all of humanity.

What if nothing exists and we’re all in somebody’s dream?

Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself.

A lot of dreams can turn to nightmares… if you don’t really work them.

For me, the world that I inhabit in reality is probably a very different world than the one people expect that I would be in.

We call first truths those we discover after all the others.

You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.

Every person above the ordinary has a certain mission that they are called to fulfill.

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

I have made the mistaken assumption – and I will attempt to be better at this – of thinking that because somebody is on Twitter and is attacking me that it is open season. And that is my mistake.

Helped are those who create anything at all, for they shall relive the thrill of their own conception and realize a partnership in the creation of the Universe that keeps them responsible and cheerful.

Only if you have been in the deepest valley, can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.

Some minds remain open long enough for the truth not only to enter but to pass on through by way of a ready exit without pausing anywhere along the route.

If you’re always under the pressure of real identity, I think that is somewhat of a burden.

To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment.