The essence of Richard Nixon is loneliness.

I’ve always been – you know, my personality is motivating and encouraging. And so I’m just being who God made me to be.

If you listen through the screen of your desires, then you obviously listen to your own voice; you are listening to your own desires.

We fear to know the fearsome and unsavory aspects of ourselves, but we fear even more to know the godlike in ourselves.

Throughout my years in business, I discovered something. I would always ask why you do things. The answers that I would invariably get are: ‚Oh, that’s just the way things are done around here.‘ Nobody knows why they do what they do. Nobody thinks very deeply about things in business.

My peers, lately, have found companionship through means of intoxication – it makes them sociable. I, however, cannot force myself to use drugs to cheat on my loneliness – it is all that I have – and when the drugs and alcohol dissipate, will be all that my peers have as well.

Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary ‚real‘ world.

One thing you gotta know about me is I have absolutely no filter. I have no problem saying what the hell I think of someone.

The pause between the errors and trials of the day and the hopes of the night.

Traveling around the world and preaching for over 70 years did not give much time for reflection.

I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library.

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.

I’m reflective only in the sense that I learn to move forward. I reflect with a purpose.

I am getting to the point where the only love worth being in is the love worth singing about.

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.

It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment.

It is not possible to eat me without insisting that I sing praises of my devourer?

If it’s all instruction, you get annoyed with it and bored, and you stop reading. If it’s all entertainment, you read it quite quickly, your heart going pitty-pat, pitty-pat. But when you finish, that’s it. You’re not going to think about it much afterward, apart from the odd nightmare. You’re not going to read that book again.

People are more aware now of cities and of different ways of life. I suppose the writing I do is a bit in the past, and I’m not sure it’s the kind of writing I would do if I were starting now.

However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act on upon them?

Things have never been more like the way they are today in history.

There’s no reality except the one contained within us. That’s why so many people live an unreal life. They take images outside them for reality and never allow the world within them to assert itself.

When we see persons of worth, we should think of equaling them; when we see persons of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves.

At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures – be what he is. And, above all, accept these things.

One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.

The end is the beginning of all things, Suppressed and hidden, Awaiting to be released through the rhythm Of pain and pleasure.

I think 9/11 affected everybody in one way or another.

When I went back to England after a year away, the country seemed stuck, dozing in a fairy tale, stifled by the weight of tradition.

When a man fell into his anecdotage it was a sign for him to retire from the world.

Man is a universe within himself.

I think that, ah, I’m a very goofy sort of person in many ways.

Dreams have only one owner at a time. That’s why dreamers are lonely.

All wrong-doing arises because of mind. If mind is transformed can wrong-doing remain?

The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.

To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.

Life is a dead-end street.

I always say this about my music, and music in general: Music is like a time capsule. Each album reflects what I’m going through or what’s going on in my life at that moment.

In ‚Changeling,‘ I tried to show something you’d never see nowadays – a kid sitting and looking at the radio. Just sitting in front of the radio and listening. Your mind does the rest.

Unbeing dead isn’t being alive.

If you are lonely when you’re alone, you are in bad company.

When I was younger, I was testing myself and questioning everything, but now it’s less about that and more about these are the years of my life with my family.

Every spirit makes its house, and we can give a shrewd guess from the house to the inhabitant.

There is no such thing as a pure introvert or extrovert. Such a person would be in the lunatic asylum.

Existence precedes and rules essence.

Would that I were a dry well, and that the people tossed stones into me, for that would be easier than to be a spring of flowing water that the thirsty pass by, and from which they avoid drinking.

I really have no interest in myself.

Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.

There was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass.

‚Pure experience‘ is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.

It was still quiet in the house, and not a sound was heard from outside, either. Were it not for this silence, my reverie would probably have been disrupted by reminders of daily duties, of getting up and going to school.

I guess every single word I’ve ever said is going to be dissected now.

The reason I talk to myself is that I’m the only one whose answers I accept.

What difference is there between us, save a restless dream that follows my soul but fears to come near you?

Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend – or a meaningful day.

My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me.

I think Pat Robertson is a terrific fellow.

A vigorous temper is not altogether an evil. Men who are easy as an old shoe are generally of little worth.

If you desire to be good, begin by believing that you are wicked.

I’d love to date somebody cool, fun, funny.

For Africa to me… is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.

As soon as you have a language that has a past tense and a future tense you’re going to say, ‚Where did we come from, what happens next?‘ The ability to remember the past helps us plan the future.