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.

An employer of mine back in the ’80s was kind enough to take me on after a rough patch, and it made a big difference in my life that I knew I was the sort of person who showed up on time. It’s a basic tell of character.

When I was growing up, there was nobody in my family – not even my mother – who I could look to and be like, ‚I know you’ve never said anything homophobic.‘ So, you know, you worry about people in the business who you’ve heard talk that way. Some of my heroes coming up talk recklessly like that.

I love my friends and my past, and it’s made me who I am.

It’s hard for anybody who’s been with me not to feel starved for affection when I’m making love to my ideas. Maybe it’s not meant for me to settle down and be married.

Find out who you are. And do it on purpose.

If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.

I kept a diary right after I was born. Day 1: Tired from the move. Day 2: Everyone thinks I’m an idiot.

Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.

The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort.

Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends.

Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know my self, to know it completely, to know its minutiae, its characteristics, its subtleties, and its very atoms.

I’ve always had a problem with the average macho man – they’ve always been a threat to me.

A man can’t be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.

Always first draw fresh breath after outbursts of vanity and complacency.

When you realize who you live for, and who’s important to please, a lot of people will actually start living. I am never going to get caught up in that. I’m gonna look back on my life and say that I enjoyed it – and I lived it for me.

I believe that one key to success is to accept truth, no matter how it’s spoken.

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.

I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.

When you face a ‚performance‘ that might provoke the ‚I’m scared‘ response, choose love and approach your opportunity as a chance to dance with God. It’s more fun than ‚Dancing with the Stars!‘

I never say I am a guru.

Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.

We cannot live being obsessed with what other people think about us. It’s impossible to live like that. Not even God managed to please the entire world.

The problem with me, as far as getting married and having a family, is that my comedy is so important to me. So I don’t know if I’ll ever be as good a dad as my dad.

Let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth to see it like it is, and tell it like it is, to find the truth, to speak the truth, and to live the truth.

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

Reactive people… are often affected by their physical environment. They find external sources to blame for their behavior.

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

Help others and give something back. I guarantee you will discover that while public service improves the lives and the world around you, its greatest reward is the enrichment and new meaning it will bring your own life.

It isn’t what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about.

Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.

What I can say is that all my characters are searching for their souls, because they are my mirrors. I’m someone who is constantly trying to understand my place in the world, and literature is the best way that I found in order to see myself.

Character isn’t something you were born with and can’t change, like your fingerprints. It’s something you weren’t born with and must take responsibility for forming.

There is no coming to consciousness without pain.

If you don’t like what you’re doing, then don’t do it.

I used to worry about every little thing, trying to figure out every problem. Well, I realize now how foolish that was. I was no more in control of my life than the man on the moon.

A warrior is not a person that carries a gun. The biggest war you ever go through is right between your own ears. It’s in your mind. We’re all going through a war in our mind, and we have to callus our mind to fight that war and to win that war.

Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.

Tell me what you like and I’ll tell you what you are.

Many people have an intense feeling about what they’re best at. Too often, they’re driven away from it by other people.

I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.

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

The things that transfixed you as a child, that you found most exciting was not a passing fancy, but a message about what you’re supposed to do.

I don’t have much positive to say about motor neuron disease, but it taught me not to pity myself because others were worse off, and to get on with what I still could do. I’m happier now than before I developed the condition.

Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.

Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.

‚Perfection‘ to me is, I walk away from a situation and say, ‚I did everything I could do right there. There was nothing more that I could do.‘ I was a hundred percent, like the meter was at the top. There was nothing else I could have done. You know? Like, I worked as hard as I possibly could have. That’s perfection.

I try to teach my heart not to want things it can’t have.

Experience is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you.

I grew up in an environment where being polite was taken as a weakness. So I just fought everybody.

Nobody can hurt me without my permission.

As I got older, I guess I became more mellow and more forgiving and more loving.

I’m afraid that people who know me as I usually am will discover I have another side, a better and finer side. I’m afraid they’ll mock me, think I’m ridiculous and sentimental and not take me seriously. I’m used to not being taken seriously, but only the ‚light-hearted‘ Anne is used to it and can put up with it; the ‚deeper‘ Anne is too weak.

I’m mortified to be on the stage, but then again, it’s the only place where I’m happy.

I can’t pretend that I’m brave and that I can beat the whole world.

My fate cannot be mastered; it can only be collaborated with and thereby, to some extent, directed. Nor am I the captain of my soul; I am only its noisiest passenger.

Nothing on ‚Relapse‘ and very little on ‚Recovery‘ was produced by me.

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.

The spirit is there in every boy; it has to be discovered and brought to light.