Self-interest is the enemy of all true affection.

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 grow older, but we do not change. We become more sophisticated, but at bottom we continue to resemble our young selves, eager to listen to the next story and the next, and the next.

He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted.

The giving of love is an education in itself.

Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.

My whole life has been one big improvisation.

I’m always attracted to people who interest me. They’ve got to be people who are really true to themselves somehow, and who are always trying to do something that makes their life more interesting, or better, or something for somebody else. They’re interested in people.

If you get down and quarell everyday, you’re saying prayers to the devil, I say.

For me, being raised in a free America made all the difference.

Humble people ask for help.

I don’t have a problem with ageing – in fact, I embrace that aspect of it. And am able to and obviously am going to be able to quite easily… it doesn’t faze me at all.

You can’t do something forever.

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.

I’m not this horrible, evil person.

Your attitude towards failure determines your altitude after failure.

Often, little situations trigger enormous reactions. Be there, present for it. Your partner will find it easier to see it in you, and you will find it easier to see it in them.

Fame may go by and – so long, I’ve had you.

Every man’s reputation proceeds from those of his own household.

When I was growing up, I wasn’t an extrovert. If anything, I was an introverted kid and a very average pupil at school. I was very quiet.

Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.

The world is round so that friendship may encircle it.

It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all.

Most people want to avoid pain, and discipline is usually painful.

If one by one we counted people out For the least sin, it wouldn’t take us long To get so we had no one left to live with. For to be social is to be forgiving.

Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others.

You can write a song about being in love with someone, but you don’t have to be in love with anyone.

Do something everyday for no other reason than you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test.

It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.

I’m on record that it didn’t really traumatize me to do away with some people.

Friendship increases in visiting friends, but in visiting them seldom.

The beginning of compunction is the beginning of a new life.

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.

Whatever has happened in my quest for innovation has been part of my quest for immaculate reality.

Most of us have far more courage than we ever dreamed we possessed.

When I was four, my mother insisted I get out of the car and find my own way home. Although I got lost, I did find my way home. It taught me the value of independence at an early age.

I spent most of the early years of my walk with God focused on what was wrong with me. Most of us probably do that, hoping to change ourselves.

All you need is love.

You can close more business in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get people interested in you.

I’m not intimidated by how people perceive me.

I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict.

I’m a romantic; a sentimental person thinks things will last, a romantic person hopes against hope that they won’t.

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.

Sometimes, I want to talk on a song and be angry, because I am angry. Then there’s always a part of me that remembers that this record lives past my being angry, and so do I really want to be angry about that? Is that feeling going to have longevity?

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.

Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.

Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can’t sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can’t sleep with the window open.

Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.

Through my films I’m eventually trying to one day tell the truth. I don’t know if I’m ever going to get there, but I’m slowly letting pieces of myself out there and then maybe by the time I’m 85, I’ll look back and say, ‚All right, that about sums it up.‘

People should pursue what they’re passionate about. That will make them happier than pretty much anything else.

There’s only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn what it is I’ll get married again.

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

Don’t be afraid to see what you see.

It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.

Humility is to make a right estimate of one’s self.

I don’t have any secrets I need kept any more.

Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.

I searched for years I found no love. I’m sure that love will never be a product of plasticity.

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

People don’t usually compliment your character.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.