The experience of pain or loss can be a formidably motivating force.

Buy the ticket, take the ride.

My life as a child did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel and bitter things.

Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.

The one thing that I keep learning over and over again is that I don’t know nothing. I mean, that’s my life lesson.

I think the tiniest little thing can change the course of your day, which can change the course of your year, which can change who you are.

We’re all capable of mistakes, but I do not care to enlighten you on the mistakes we may or may not have made.

The older you get, the better you get.

It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five.

Studies perfect nature and are perfected still by experience.

The roots of the problems we face in the world, in our national life, and in our family and personal lives are spiritual.

You get to a point where it’s like you can’t really do anything right, and people will pick on you for whatever decisions you make, so I just try and take no notice and get on with my music.

Had I been a great athlete, I’m not sure I would have even gone into coaching. I may have turned out feeling that my life ended when my athletic career ended, as happens so many times with various athletes.

Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death.

That is the real spiritual awakening, when something emerges from within you that is deeper than who you thought you were. So, the person is still there, but one could almost say that something more powerful shines through the person.

No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence.

I heard that when Christina Aguilera went back to her prom, people, like, booed her. I can’t imagine going through that. If you know that’s going to happen, why put yourself in that situation? I’d rather play for 20,000 screaming people, you know?

Well, it’s looks like I’ve a love-hate thing going on with Monaco.

I have no time to think about other writers. I am too busy with my own problems.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person. That’s the only way I can find an explanation for why 55,000 people would want to come see me sing.

The people in my songs are all me.

A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but, one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.

The fame thing is interesting because I never wanted to be famous, and I never dreamt I would be famous.

Men take only their needs into consideration – never their abilities.

One can love a child, perhaps, more deeply than one can love another adult, but it is rash to assume that the child feels any love in return.

I don’t think I’ve ever worked so hard on something, but working on Macintosh was the neatest experience of my life. Almost everyone who worked on it will say that. None of us wanted to release it at the end. It was as though we knew that once it was out of our hands, it wouldn’t be ours anymore.

People can cry much easier than they can change.

Marines don’t know how to spell the word ‚defeat‘.

I don’t like looking back. I’m always constantly looking forward. I’m not the one to sort of sit and cry over spilt milk. I’m too busy looking for the next cow.

There is no person so severely punished, as those who subject themselves to the whip of their own remorse.

I’ve lived in good climate, and it bores the hell out of me. I like weather rather than climate.

I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do! That is character!

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.

I want to put a ding in the universe.

Weak minds sink under prosperity as well as adversity; but strong and deep ones have two high tides.

I’m aware that, whatever the circumstances, there will always be speculation about me.

People tend to play in their comfort zone, so the best things are achieved in a state of surprise, actually.

You gotta keep trying to find your niche and trying to fit into whatever slot that’s left for you or to make one of your own.

Of course I get hurt.

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.

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

I couldn’t ever go back home without being something. I probably would never have gone back home. That was definitely a big motivation. To get back home, and not empty-handed.

My pride fell with my fortunes.

I was brought up as an only child, and we were very close. But when I was 14, we got evicted. We came home to a padlock, and I looked up at my mom and she was crying, and there was nothing to do.

Prepare for the unknown by studying how others in the past have coped with the unforeseeable and the unpredictable.

If it’s going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.

Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling?

I’m a songwriter. Everything affects me.

The best thing I did was to choose the right heroes.

Any hand that I’ve shaken, any person that I met when I was Joe Blow, now that I’m this guy Kevin Hart, has come back. That’s why I treat everybody with respect. I’m always a nice pleasant guy to meet because when they come back to you, they remember.

I gather from motivation around me – from a lot of personalities who have done well in their respective fields.

I’ve done the bad-boy thing. It was fun for a good three months. But the thing about bad boys is, you have to keep in mind, you’re never gonna marry a bad boy.

There is no coming to consciousness without pain.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

In every parting there is an image of death.

When I grew up, the Devil was a reason why I had a headache or the Devil was the reason I got mad today. We always blamed the Devil. I think today when I say the Enemy, I like to make it broader. Sometimes the Enemy can be our own thoughts.

Here is the rule to remember in the future, When anything tempts you to be bitter: not, ‚This is a misfortune‘ but ‚To bear this worthily is good fortune.‘

Nearly all the things I do that are of any merit at all start off just being good fun, and I think I’m sort of building up to doing something else quite soon.

Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.

I sang a song at my sister’s wedding. My mother forced me into that, too. But that one felt all right.

Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again.