The mind of a 19-year-old is very different from the mind of a 26-year-old. You grow. You get into better relationships. You experience more, meet more people, better people. But when you’re in a dark hole at an earlier point in your life – you write about the mindset you’re in at that moment.

A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a man in London if he has a comfortable income.

Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships.

Success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.

At fifty everyone has the face he deserves.

Idleness is the parent of psychology.

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.

Your emotions are very unstable and should never be the foundation for direction in your life.

I don’t know what can be so dangerous about giving people hope. Causing people to have better relationships. I’m not leading them to some false God or something like that.

Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, and its power of endurance – the cheerful man will do more in the same time, will do it; better, will preserve it longer, than the sad or sullen.

One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.

My secret to staying young… Having no sense of time.

I allow myself to fail. I allow myself to break. I’m not afraid of my flaws.

I think and that is all that I am.

I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again – as I always am when I write.

How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.

I’ve never been a jealous person, and I’ve never felt built up by someone else’s failure – that’s a cheap thrill.

I have great respect for the past. If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going. I have respect for the past, but I’m a person of the moment. I’m here, and I do my best to be completely centered at the place I’m at, then I go forward to the next place.

Joanne‘ is a progression for me. It was about going into the studio and forgetting that I was famous.

There is nothing that wastes the body like worry, and one who has any faith in God should be ashamed to worry about anything whatsoever.

Don’t just let the devil use your mind as a garbage dump.

The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.

It is far better to be alone, than to be in bad company.

I’ve always wanted to live above my means because it inspired me to work harder.

The greatest magnifying glasses in the world are a man’s own eyes when they look upon his own person.

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.

I am a child but I have to think and act like a woman, this business forces you to.

Spending time with God through prayer and His Word is a prerequisite for having a great life and fulfilling your purpose.

Violence, even well intentioned, always rebounds upon oneself.

We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‚I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.‘

As I get older, I tend to put more into family than I used to.

Don’t ever forget two things I’m going to tell you. One, don’t believe everything that’s written about you. Two, don’t pick up too many checks.

Isn’t it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular fellow?

I’m pretty sure I don’t have any songs that are about how much I love someone. They’re all either about, like, ‚I hate you,‘ or ‚You make me hate me.‘

Family quarrels are bitter things. They don’t go according to any rules. They’re not like aches or wounds, they’re more like splits in the skin that won’t heal because there’s not enough material.

It is not love that should be depicted as blind, but self-love.

Part of our tradition as black women is that we are universalists. Black children, yellow children, red children, brown children, that is the black woman’s normal, day-to-day relationship. In my family alone, we are about four different colors.

Those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.

To live is to think.

My partner Donald Trump says that married couples should always have a prenuptial agreement. True, a prenuptial is important if one partner is much richer than the other before marriage, but Kim and I don’t have one.

Most of the people that I deal with are human. So I’ve had a lot of experience with that.

Eating is so intimate. It’s very sensual. When you invite someone to sit at your table and you want to cook for them, you’re inviting a person into your life.

In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.

He that overvalues himself will undervalue others, and he that undervalues others will oppress them.

Take a chance! All life is a chance. The man who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare.

I must govern the clock, not be governed by it.

Education forms the common mind. Just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined.

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

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

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

Vulnerability is the birthplace of connection and the path to the feeling of worthiness. If it doesn’t feel vulnerable, the sharing is probably not constructive.

People think you have to go through something to write about it, and you absolutely do not. You can write about, like, a shoe. It’s a story.

I think there are things that are based in your own dealings with someone that is a personal dealing, not a public dealing. Because you have personal experiences.

Without forgiveness, there’s no future.

I don’t like people going behind my back.

I’ve tried everything. I’ve done therapy, I’ve done colonics. I went to a psychic who had me running around town buying pieces of ribbon to fill the colors in my aura. Did the Prozac thing.

Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power.

A woman will doubt everything you say except it be compliments to herself.

It used to be the case, like you’d switch jobs, and then maybe you wouldn’t keep in touch with all the people that you knew from that old job, just because it was too hard. But one of the things that Facebook does is it makes it really easy to just stay in touch with all these people.

Don’t be afraid to see what you see.