Some people are very good at being ‚stars‘ and it suits them. I’m grudging about it and I find it annoying.

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.‘

We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or disappointment.

I am never satisfied with myself and that is what keeps me going – I have no post-satisfaction.

Bottom line is, I didn’t return to Apple to make a fortune. I’ve been very lucky in my life and already have one. When I was 25, my net worth was $100 million or so. I decided then that I wasn’t going to let it ruin my life. There’s no way you could ever spend it all, and I don’t view wealth as something that validates my intelligence.

I have a personal ambition to live my life honestly and honor the true love that I’ve had and also the people I’ve had around me.

You can’t do something forever.

When you smoke the herb, it reveals you to yourself.

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.

If all you’re doing is grinding for the man, it’s going to burden you. Once you say, ‚Hey, I’m grinding for the man, but I’m putting money away, and this is part of my exit strategy,‘ you’re working for you.

There’s something about being in front of a live audience that’s fun. It’s a really interesting, very electric, very alive, and intense experience, and you can’t get it anywhere else. And I’ve been doing it since I was 23, so it’s part of my being – it’s part of my fabric as a person.

There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

Follow that will and that way which experience confirms to be your own.

If I am no longer disturbed myself, I will deal less with disturbed people, but I don’t regret having concerned myself with them because I think most of us are disturbed.

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

I know that I always wanted things. I was always proud of my people, proud of my home, but I always wanted more. I think most people do.

When I inspire myself, I want to spread the word because its important to be healthy. I don’t think they’re teaching us enough about that. I think we should eat better and exercise. Look who’s saying that – a guy who was 300 pounds – but I’m doing a lot better than I used to. I’m letting people know its important because it makes you feel better.

I don’t want to be alone, I want to be left alone.

I have a terrifying long list of fears. Literally everything – diseases, spiders… and people getting tired of me.

I’m not sure if it’s good to have freedom or not. I’m really confused now.

Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.

Take the complications, rules, shoulds, musts, have tos, and so on out of your life. By uncomplicating your life and removing the trivial pursuits that occupy so much of it, you open a channel for the genius within you to emerge.

I’m not generally a sensitive person, but I tend to be more sensitive toward others and what they’re going through. I don’t know if that’s the healthiest thing, but it’s the truth.

As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.

It makes no sense to worry about things you have no control over because there’s nothing you can do about them, and why worry about things you do control? The activity of worrying keeps you immobilized.

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.

I don’t really know that much about love, it turns out.

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.

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.

I’m so nervous. I’ve always been nervous, ever since I was a kid.

I don’t regret anything.

The strongest influences in my life and my work are always whomever I love. Whomever I love and am with most of the time, or whomever I remember most vividly. I think that’s true of everyone, don’t you?

Live one day at a time emphasizing ethics rather than rules.

I’m here to fight for the re-education of what celebrity is: to say, ‚Yes, we are celebrities, but yes, we’re also innovators. We’re also inventors. We’re also thoughtful.‘

We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.

If you have an enemy, then learn and know your enemy, don’t just be mad at him or her.

Freedom is not given to us by anyone; we have to cultivate it ourselves. It is a daily practice… No one can prevent you from being aware of each step you take or each breath in and breath out.

All my stepchildren carried the burden of my fame. Sometimes they would read terrible things about me, and I’d worry about whether it would hurt them. I would tell them: ‚Don’t hide these things from me. I’d rather you ask me these things straight out, and I’ll answer all your questions.‘

People think I’m a celebrity. I’m not a celebrity.

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.

Oh, I’ve always been very… Emotional. ‚Hypersensitive‘ is what they call it, I think.

Good character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop good character.

Life becomes harder for us when we live for others, but it also becomes richer and happier.

I wear wigs all the time on shows, and every day when I’m in public, at Dollywood. People say, ‚How many wigs do you have?‘ And I say, ‚Well, at least 365 because I wear at least one a day.‘

The most happy man is he who knows how to bring into relation the end and beginning of his life.

I’m not in it for fame. I’ve been famous in the streets already.

I was asked to act when I couldn’t act. I was asked to sing ‚Funny Face‘ when I couldn’t sing, and dance with Fred Astaire when I couldn’t dance – and do all kinds of things I wasn’t prepared for. Then I tried like mad to cope with it.

It’s an offseason. These days are valuable for everybody.

I don’t do things for the response or for the controversy. I just live my life.

The spirit of envy can destroy; it can never build.

I didn’t think it was special to be able to sing.

The advice I’ve been giving to people all my life – that you may not be interested in the dialectic but the dialectic is interested in you; you can’t give up politics, it won’t give you up – was the advice I should have been taking myself.

I never do anything that I don’t want to do.

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

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

I always wonder when it was that I was embraced.

Some Christians feel guilty when they are doing something that isn’t ‚spiritual.‘ Somehow or another, they feel the need to hurry through the grocery store, dash through the house cleaning, and rush through all the daily aspects of life that seem irrelevant to their faith.

Fame can take interesting men and thrust mediocrity upon them.

When I was 8 years old I became a mute and was a mute until I was 13, and I thought of my whole body as an ear, so I can go into a crowd and sit still and absorb all sound. That talent or ability has lasted and served me until today.

I don’t see the point of doing an interview unless you’re going to share the things you learn in life and the mistakes you make. So to admit that I’m extremely human and have done some dark things I don’t think makes me unusual or unusually dark. I think it actually is the right thing to do, and I’d like to think it’s the nice thing to do.