The people in my songs are all me.

I made my fair share of mistakes.

Live out of your imagination, not your history.

It doesn’t matter where you are coming from. All that matters is where you are going.

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

Music helps me tell my story. That’s where I can really be heard. But there’s so much focus on the things that aren’t music.

I just want to keep writing music.

Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is Enlightenment.

I just wanted to be a songwriter. I did really not like the sound of my own voice.

Books are like a mirror. If an ass looks in, you can’t expect an angel to look out.

I hope not to define myself by suffering.

Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed.

You have to be smart. The easy days are over.

The question is not, ‚Do you have a problem?‘ The question is, ‚Does the problem have you?‘

I imagine I will be less involved in film and be focused more on family and foreign affairs.

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

I am proud of having done what I’ve done. Very proud.

My lyrics are generated by various peculiar processes. Very random and similar to automatic writing.

We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.

What is a fear of living? It’s being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility for yourself – for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don’t know what you’re here to do, then just do some good.

I haven’t changed at all. I’m the same as when I was 11.

I seldom end up where I wanted to go, but almost always end up where I need to be.

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

I’ve never been a boyfriend kind of girl.

I wish I knew why I am so anguished.

You have to just make the choices you make in life. I made the choices I made because I believed they were right for me.

We’re all insecure, aren’t we? I’m not walking around like I’m macho man or anything.

Humble people ask for help.

I don’t see the point of doing an interview unless you’re going to share the things you learn in life and the mistakes you make. So to admit that I’m extremely human and have done some dark things I don’t think makes me unusual or unusually dark. I think it actually is the right thing to do, and I’d like to think it’s the nice thing to do.

The slave is doomed to worship time and fate and death, because they are greater than anything he finds in himself, and because all his thoughts are of things which they devour.

I was raised in a family where vulnerability was barely tolerated: no training wheels on our bicycles, no goggles in the pool, just get it done. And so I grew up not only with discomfort about my own vulnerability, I didn’t care for it in other people either.

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

Every time you think the problem is ‚out there,‘ that very thought is the problem.

If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.

What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.

A song is anything that can walk by itself.

You can’t have it all all at once. Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all, but in given periods in time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.

My whole life is a theater piece.

I long remained a child, and I am still one in many respects.

Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, ‚But how can it be like that?‘ because you will get ‚down the drain,‘ into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.

The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.

Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences.

Your entire life only happens in this moment. The present moment is life itself. Yet, people live as if the opposite were true and treat the present moment as a stepping stone to the next moment – a means to an end.

I don’t think human beings learn anything without desperation. Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything or creating anything. Period. If you ain’t desperate at some point, you ain’t interesting.

Not to go back is somewhat to advance, and men must walk, at least, before they dance.

Even though I write about the human race, the further away from them, the better I feel. Two miles is great; two thousand miles is beautiful.

I don’t want to make money; I want to make a difference.

If you consider the definition of authenticity, it’s saying something and actually doing it. I write my own songs. I made my own videos. I pick my producers. Nothing goes out without my permission. It’s all authentic.

Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.

I am an ordinary man who worked hard to develop the talent I was given. I believed in myself, and I believe in the goodness of others.

Don’t think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.

Not being afraid to be wrong – I had to learn how to do that.

Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had.

Action may not bring happiness but there is no happiness without action.

Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.

I’m gonna make what I want to make, and other people are gonna like what they’re gonna like. It doesn’t really matter.

Having a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing seems to me to be one of the most basic principles that you can adopt to contribute to individual and world peace.

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

I always tell young girls, surround yourself with goodness. I learned early on how to get the haters out of my life.

I’m not a bad person.

It’s more interesting for me to figure out how to be superior in areas where I’m naive, where I’m a novice.