Talk well of the absent whenever you have the opportunity.

Life began with waking up and loving my mother’s face.

The best thing is to always keep honest people around, because when you have a bunch of yes men around that know that you’re making a mistake but let you go on with it, that’s when it ruins your mind state as an artist.

The minute you start compromising for the sake of massaging somebody’s ego, that’s it, game over.

There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.

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

I really want to love somebody. I do. I just don’t know if it’s possible forever and ever.

Language is an intrinsic part of who we are and what has, for good or evil, happened to us.

Listening has importance only when one is not projecting one’s own desires through which one listens.

There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It’s always been my way of expressing what, for me, is inexpressible by any other means.

No matter how beautiful a woman might be, you’re always threatened by certain… You’re always threatened by other women, period.

I’ll tell you one thing, since I’m married, single people look absolutely ridiculous to me.

To love is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.

Hostesses who entertain much must make up their parties as ministers make up their cabinets, on grounds other than personal liking.

I know when I grew up, it was, if it was daylight outside, get outside. Well, now, with the technological age of computers and everything, everyone’s inside virtually going everywhere they want to go, virtually having relationships, virtually traveling across the neighborhood, virtually going to that island.

A friend to all is a friend to none.

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.

I respect Chris Brown. I’d like to call myself a friend – I don’t know if I’m allowed to do that.

What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

America’s promises do not come with a price tag. We meet our commitments. We bear our burdens. That’s one of the reasons why almost every country on Earth sees America as stronger and more respected today than they did eight years ago when I took office.

Doing Saturday Night Live definitely affects my relationship with my girlfriend and with my family, because you feel so much pressure to do well that night. But I think everyone’s grown to accept that and so they give me my space at the show.

I do not, in fact, use many puns. Certainly there are far fewer than people believe. But I suspect the ones I do occasionally use tend to hang around in people’s memories for a while.

I hope I would not be so arrogant as to doubt anyone’s religion or belief.

You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment. In that insight of inter-being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer.

Music fills in for words a lot of the time when people don’t know what to say, and I think music can be more eloquent than words.

I’ve learned that we all change constantly. It’s rare to find that person who is growing with you in the same way at the same time, who encourages you to grow.

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

I don’t like talking to celebrities.

I’m grateful for the opportunities God gave me to minister to people in high places; people in power have spiritual and personal needs like everyone else, and often they have no one to talk to.

A noble person attracts noble people, and knows how to hold on to them.

If you can’t move and talk to people that you see, it’s not really my scene.

Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.

We do not know what love is. We know the symptoms of it, the pleasure, the pain, the fear, the anxiety and so on. We try to solve the symptoms, which becomes a wandering in darkness. We spend our days and nights in this, and it is soon over in death.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

It’s not a slam at you when people are rude, it’s a slam at the people they’ve met before.

Alimony is like buying hay for a dead horse.

The best morale exist when you never hear the word mentioned. When you hear a lot of talk about it, it’s usually lousy.

I think what motivates people is not great hate, but great love for other people.

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.

I am not very good with relationships. With anyone. I can’t be locked up with anyone for too long.

A pessimist? That’s a person who has been intimately acquainted with an optimist.

Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.

Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.

I was extremely lucky that I had two great wives. It sounds a bit funny to say that, but it’s absolutely true.

Why are women… so much more interesting to men than men are to women?

Consider the fellow. He never spends his time telling you about his previous night’s date. You get the idea he has eyes only for you and wouldn’t think of looking at another woman.

I just want to live happily ever after, every now and then.

An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.

I’ll think I have a few wonderful friends and all of a sudden, ooh, here it comes. They do a lot of things. They talk about you to the press, to their friends, tell stories, and you know, it’s disappointing.

Remember that creating a successful marriage is like farming: you have to start over again every morning.

Tell the children the truth.

I’m pretty positive, optimistic, so I always expect the best.

I think, under President Obama, who was a really bright guy – I didn’t agree with a lot of his politics – but we got to the point internationally where our friends didn’t trust us. They were confused. And our enemies didn’t quite respect us.

When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.

One of the most terrible feelings in the world is knowing that someone else doesn’t like you. Especially when you don’t know what you’ve done to deserve it.

I know that I’m not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don’t know how not to.

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.

I don’t know why they gave me a knighthood – though it’s very nice of them – but I only ever use the title in the U.S. The Americans insist on it and get offended if I don’t.

Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.

The death of my father is probably the biggest thing that I ever faced. Daddy and I were best friends.