The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it’s dead for you.

Sometimes we look back and 10 years from now we think, ‚Boy, those were great old days.‘ Well, you know, we’re living in the good old days.

Fame doesn’t fulfill you. It warms you a bit, but that warmth is temporary.

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

To see things in the seed, that is genius.

Just talk to me as a father – not what the Constitution says. What do you feel?

Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?

Optimism means better than reality; pessimism means worse than reality. I’m a realist.

When I am angry I can pray well and preach well.

There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.

A lot of the time when I write about the person that I love, I feel like I’m writing about New York.

In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.

Once you begin to fall off the track and believe you breathe different air to everyone else, you’re doomed; you’re finished.

The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.

Once you say you’re going to settle for second, that’s what happens to you in life.

The two things in the world we all share in this world are laughter and pain. We’ve all got problems. The levels of those problems vary, but we’ve all got problems. When you can take things that are painful and make them funny, that’s a gift – to you and your audience.

Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.

If selfishness is the key to being miserable, then selflessness must be the key to being happy!

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.

Who shall measure the hat and violence of the poet’s heart when caught and tangled in a woman’s body?

It all depends on how we look at things, and not how they are in themselves.

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.

As you get older, time speeds up but life slows down.

Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.

I don’t look at a man who’s expert in one area as a specialist. I look at him as a rookie in ten other areas.

Check your ego at the door. The ego can be the great success inhibitor. It can kill opportunities, and it can kill success.

No matter what, people grow. If you chose not to grow, you’re staying in a small box with a small mindset. People who win go outside of that box. It’s very simple when you look at it.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

Some people feel that the world owes them a living.

I like the way the stories of my relationships sound to music more than the way they look in print, in gossip columns or in me talking about them in interviews. I think it’s a better way of telling the stories.

Writing is challenging work because it’s so easy to get consumed with how it’s going, what’s going to happen to it, who’s going to like or not like it. You want to get all of that stuff out of your head and just let the work flow.

I think I am smart unless I am really, really in love, and then I am ridiculously stupid.

I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‚Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.

What you see, but can’t see over is as good as infinite.

Age merely shows what children we remain.

Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around!

Fear is stupid. So are regrets.

The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason.

It’s possible to love a human being if you don’t know them too well.

Things ain’t what they used to be and never were.

No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time a steady eye.

Say not, ‚I have found the truth,‘ but rather, ‚I have found a truth.‘

A letdown is worth a few songs. A heartbreak is worth a few albums.

I left Mainz after 18 years and thought, ‚Next time, I will work with a little less of my heart.‘ I said that because we all cried for a week. The city gave us a goodbye party, and it lasted a week.

It’s presumptuous to say you know how somebody feels.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

I actually feel like women in my position, when we have all at our disposal to help us, shouldn’t complain when we consider all of the people who are really struggling and don’t have the means or support. Many people are single, raising children. That’s hard.

I think that success is having fun.

I’m rather kind of old school, thinking that when an artist does his work, it’s no longer his… I just see what people make of it.

The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.

It put our energies to sleep and made visionaries of us – dreamers and indolent… It is good to begin life poor; it is good to begin life rich – these are wholesome; but to begin it prospectively rich! The man who has not experienced it cannot imagine the curse of it.

If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.

Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he’s losing; nobody wants you to quit when you’re ahead.

Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.

There’s a difference in thinking you are a champion and knowing that you are.

Nobody enjoys the ‚little show about nothing‘ humor more than me, but that is never the way I look at it.

Don’t tell your problems to people: eighty percent don’t care; and the other twenty percent are glad you have them.

I loved being Maleficent. I was quite sad to put my staff down and put my horns away because somehow, she just lives in a different world.

There are no such things as Flowers there are only gladdened Leaves.

I don’t fight in chase of an individual. I hear this sometimes where fighters work their whole careers to reach a matchup with a certain individual. I do not think in that way.