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

Everything is an open book. I don’t speak on other people’s hardship, but if it happened in my life or something that has been an experience on my particular journey, I’m going to talk about it. That’s what my fan base appreciates the most. I’m universal. You can relate to the things I say or that I go through.

Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worse kind of suffering.

I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.

Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable.

Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.

I cannot always control what goes on outside. But I can always control what goes on inside.

It’s still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air. When I write, I get all the weeping out.

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.

My dad seemed comfortable with his decision to be a ‚have-not,‘ but I knew that I wasn’t.

Self-pity in its early stage is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.

We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our education system.

If you’re serious, you really understand that it’s important that you laugh as much as possible and admit that you’re the funniest person you ever met. You have to laugh. Admit that you’re funny. Otherwise, you die in solemnity.

The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him; he indulges it, he loves it; but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.

Those of us who submitted or surrendered our ideas and dreams and identities to the ‚leaders‘ must take back our rights, our identities, our responsibilities.

Having a child, that’s always been my biggest fear. I want a child and I fear a child.

The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult.

You can bear your own faults, and why not a fault in your wife?

The real truths of life are never entirely new to you or to anybody because there is a level deep down within you where you already know all the things, all those spiritual truths that you read or hear, and then recognize them. I say ‚recognize‘ because you’re not… it’s not new.

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.

The display of grief makes more demands than grief itself. How few men are sad in their own company.

A lot of the problems I had with fame I was bringing on myself. A lot of self-loathing, a lot of woe-is-me. Now I’m learning to see the positive side of things, instead of, like, ‚I can’t go to Kmart. I can’t take my kids to the haunted house.‘

A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.

Don’t ever criticize yourself. Don’t go around all day long thinking, ‚I’m unattractive, I’m slow, I’m not as smart as my brother.‘ God wasn’t having a bad day when he made you… If you don’t love yourself in the right way, you can’t love your neighbour. You can’t be as good as you are supposed to be.

I love the natural world – it comes from my culture, which grew out of a people enslaved.

There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.

Don’t wait to be successful at some future point. Have a successful relationship with the present moment and be fully present in whatever you are doing. That is success.

There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.

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.

Morning without you is a dwindled dawn.

To meditate means to go home to yourself. Then you know how to take care of the things that are happening inside you, and you know how to take care of the things that happen around you.

Sometimes if you got a problem deep rooted in your life, it takes a little bit of time to overcome it in that area.

If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.

My life is a struggle.

I think I’ve got wiser.

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us.

Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.

To do the same thing over and over again is not only boredom: it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do.

I’m no longer just a candidate. I’m the President. I know what it means to send young Americans into battle, for I have held in my arms the mothers and fathers of those who didn’t return. I’ve shared the pain of families who’ve lost their homes, and the frustration of workers who’ve lost their jobs.

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

If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business.

I don’t concern myself with award. I’d been to the party enough times to know it really didn’t matter.

I am God’s vessel. But my greatest pain in life is that I will never be able to see myself perform live.

I’ve been reckless, but I’m not a rebel without a cause.

There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect.

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.

Skill is the unified force of experience, intellect and passion in their operation.

Maturity is the ability to reap without apology and not complain when things don’t go well.

Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.

My ultimate goal is to end up being happy. Most of the time.

I know, to banish anger altogether from one’s breast is a difficult task. It cannot be achieved through pure personal effort. It can be done only by God’s grace.

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.

It’s like, remember who you always were, where you came from, who your parents were, how they raised you. Because that authentic self is going to follow you all through life, so make sure that it’s solid so it’s something that you can hold on and be proud of for the rest of your life.

I have quite a decent constitution in spite of all my abuse of it and my advanced years. I’m still quite robust.

Why should it be essential to love rarely in order to love much?

Women, like men, should try to do the impossible. And when they fail, their failure should be a challenge to others.

Don’t feel sorry for me.

Yeah, I like to keep myself interested – I’ll kind of throw myself into some area that I don’t completely know or understand, that I’m not adept at, so I’m forced to swim in order to stay afloat. There’s a good feeling that comes from that.

I’ve heard there are troubles of more than one kind; some come from ahead, and some come from behind. But I’ve brought a big bat. I’m all ready, you see; now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!

Growing up in the place I did I never was aware of any other option but to question everything.

Sometimes you need faith and victory spoken over your life. Words have created power. When you receive them into your spirit, they can ignite seeds of increase on the inside.