Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.

I’m not a god – I do bad things.

The experience of pain or loss can be a formidably motivating force.

Every spoken word arouses our self-will.

You can live your life angry, bitter, mad at somebody or even guilty, not letting go of your own mistakes, but you won’t receive the good things God has in store.

We are not animals. We are not a product of what has happened to us in our past. We have the power of choice.

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

I didn’t want to be a fashion designer, and for a good half of my career I didn’t like it. I always wanted to do other things.

Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.

My number one thing? Don’t overleverage yourself. Don’t say you can do something when you really can’t.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.

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

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.

It’s hard for anybody who’s been with me not to feel starved for affection when I’m making love to my ideas. Maybe it’s not meant for me to settle down and be married.

The people of Northern Ireland have sorted out my whole life.

I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men.

We are time’s subjects, and time bids be gone.

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

Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.

On a given day, a given circumstance, you think you have a limit.

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.

I can’t pretend that I’m brave and that I can beat the whole world.

People should make up their own mind about what they think of me.

My weaknesses have always been food and men – in that order.

If you were to ask me what I want to do – I don’t want to be a celebrity, I want to make a difference.

Our personal intelligence is everlasting and divine.

I have great respect for the past. If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going. I have respect for the past, but I’m a person of the moment. I’m here, and I do my best to be completely centered at the place I’m at, then I go forward to the next place.

I used to pray that God would make me a great athlete, and He never did.

I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it.

Now I realize that from ’72 through to about ’76, I was the ultimate rock star. I couldn’t have been more rock star.

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.

One cannot violate the promptings of one’s nature without having that nature recoil upon itself.

Be not a slave of words.

I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I am, which is my life, the power to create.

I’m perpetually lonely.

By indignities men come to dignities.

I could never give relationship advice to anybody!

I try to be the same person I was yesterday.

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

Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself. But mankind wasn’t always so lucky. Less than a century ago, men and women did not have easy access to the puzzle boxes within them.

Everyone has at least one story, and each of us is funny if we admit it. You have to admit you’re the funniest person you’ve ever heard of.

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

Sometimes you stumble across a few chords that put you in a reflective place.

I think that we have opportunities all around us – sometimes we just don’t recognize them.

All of us are mentors. You’re mentors right here and now. And one of the things I’ve always done throughout my life, I have always found that person, that group of people that I was going to reach my hand out and help bring them along with me.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

How does a nice Catholic girl end up going to prison for a year? It’s crazy. I’ve made mistakes. I have to pay for those mistakes.

It’s very hard to live with yourself if you don’t stick with your moral code.

For people who may think they know, or have snippets of who I am, you can attack that person. That’s part of being a public figure.

The worst thing one can do is not to try, to be aware of what one wants and not give in to it, to spend years in silent hurt wondering if something could have materialized – never knowing.

The happiest people in the world are those who feel absolutely terrific about themselves, and this is the natural outgrowth of accepting total responsibility for every part of their life.

To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.

Men take only their needs into consideration – never their abilities.

Real life is the life that’s in you, not your circumstances, like where you live or what job you have or who you’re in relationship with.

It’s hard to articulate how I think about myself as a public figure.

Every now and then I read a poem that does touch something in me, but I never turn to poetry for solace or pleasure in the way that I throw myself into prose.

For most of us, wisdom is acquired in the thicket of experience and usually meets us somewhere along the way if we live long enough. But sooner is better than later.

At one time, I was very angry. I even treated fashion like a kind of crusade: you were either with us or against us, that kind of feeling. Now I know we need ideas, not kicking down a door.

There is no person so severely punished, as those who subject themselves to the whip of their own remorse.

I’ve discovered that when we take time to renew our minds with God’s Word, we learn how to think like God thinks, say what God says, and act like He wants us to act.

The ego is only an illusion, but a very influential one. Letting the ego-illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self. Ego, the false idea of believing that you are what you have or what you do, is a backwards way of assessing and living life.