Remember that your imagination is yours and yours alone. You have the inborn capacity to use it in any way that you choose. No one else is responsible for your imagination. Anything placed in your imagination and held there ultimately becomes your reality.

You say that you are my judge; I do not know if you are; but take good heed not to judge me ill, because you would put yourself in great peril.

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

‚Two Voices,‘ from my album with Peter Schwalm, is an intact dream-poem. I awoke one night with an image of a piece of paper and all the words of the poem written on it, so I just blundered down to the kitchen table and ‚copied it out.‘

Thought can be so seductive and hypnotic that it absorbs your attention totally, so you become your thoughts.

Just because something didn’t work out your way, or somebody disappointed you, that does not change who you are.

The nobler a man, the harder it is for him to suspect inferiority in others.

I feel matured in a way that I’m happy about. I’m at this other stage in my life – and it’s not a bad thing at all.

Smiling makes me feel weak and not in control and not powerful and small.

I do some kind of work, whether writing or painting or recording, on a daily basis. And it’s so essential that when I’m involved in the actual process, my so-called ‚real life‘ becomes almost incidental, which becomes worrying.

Sometimes you have to take two steps back to take ten forward.

I don’t think anything about a personal legacy. I mean, those words would never come out of my mouth unless I just repeated them. Those things have never been important to me.

If you don’t live your life, then who will?

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.

I think it’s healthy for a person to be nervous. It means you care – that you work hard and want to give a great performance. You just have to channel that nervous energy into the show.

Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.

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.

But blind to former as to future fate, what mortal knows his pre-existent state?

I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

I think when people make a record with a goal in mind – like taking it to the next level or making them seem more mature – that gets in the way of writing great songs.

Peace in the world starts with peace in oneself. If everyone lives mindfully, everyone will be more healthy, feel more fulfilled in their daily lives and there will be more peace.

I like being a writer.

Difficulties are things that show a person what they are.

You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.

Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.

Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.

First comes thought; then organization of that thought, into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination.

You don’t look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you.

For a person who grew up in the ’30s and ’40s in the segregated South, with so many doors closed without explanation to me, libraries and books said, ‚Here I am, read me.‘ Over time I have learned I am at my best around books.

The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.

I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.

I think the idea of art kills creativity.

I have discovered that just because we grow weaker physically as we age, it doesn’t mean that we must grow weaker spiritually.

There is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

I’m not this horrible, evil person.

I’ve always believed in God. I also think that’s the sort of thing that either comes as part of the equipment, the capacity to believe, or at some point in your life, when you’re in a position where you actually need help from a power greater than yourself, you simply make an agreement.

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 hope not to define myself by suffering.

Our brains are either our greatest assets or our greatest liabilities.

Thinking is a wonderful tool if it’s applied. Thinking, however, can not become the master. Thinking is a very bad master. If you’re dominated by thinking then your life becomes very restricted.

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.

Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!

I put my flaws on front street. So the world accepted my flaws, so I don’t have any flaws.

I’ve made my share of mistakes along the way, but if I have changed even one life for the better, I haven’t lived in vain.

Chance gives rise to thoughts, and chance removes them; no art can keep or acquire them.

Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.

Each morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure – that of being Salvador Dali.

The highest reward that God gives us for good work is the ability to do better work.

Any concern too small to be turned into a prayer is too small to be made into a burden.

The roots of the problems we face in the world, in our national life, and in our family and personal lives are spiritual.

Life is one big road with lots of signs. So when you riding through the ruts, don’t complicate your mind. Flee from hate, mischief and jealousy. Don’t bury your thoughts, put your vision to reality. Wake Up and Live!

Courage that grows from constitution often forsakes a man when he has occasion for it; courage which arises from a sense of duty acts; in a uniform manner.

People gonna be they own individuals and have they own worlds and I can’t knock it.

Good leaders must communicate vision clearly, creatively, and continually. However, the vision doesn’t come alive until the leader models it.

I suppose my best attribute, if you want to call it that, is sincerity. I can sell sincerity because that’s the way I am.

Before finding music, I didn’t have too many aspirations. I wanted to hang out, make a little money from whatever I had to do.

That is the real spiritual awakening, when something emerges from within you that is deeper than who you thought you were. So, the person is still there, but one could almost say that something more powerful shines through the person.

Today I love myself as I love my god: who could charge me with a sin today? I know only sins against my god; but who knows my god?

I sometimes have a tendency to walk on the dark side.

We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being.

Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.