The time when most of you should withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd.

To solve any problem, here are three questions to ask yourself: First, what could I do? Second, what could I read? And third, who could I ask?

If I forget to pray, I can’t get through the day without snapping at people.

One of my proudest moments is I didn’t sell my soul for the sake of popularity.

I think I’ve developed, as many people do, this sense of, ‚Don’t say the wrong thing, or else people will point at you and laugh.‘

One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.

I have spent many years of my life in opposition, and I rather like the role.

I always had music growing up, but music was also like a journal. It was like my personal diary or personal journal. A lot of the things I couldn’t express to an individual, I would express them in my music.

This has always been my life and no one else’s, and that’s how it’s always been since the day I came in it.

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

The truth is that you can only come to know God when you give up the past and the future in your mind and merge totally into the now, because God is always here now.

My whole life has been one big improvisation.

We become what we repeatedly do.

The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.

My head’s never really quiet. The only time I can get it to turn off is if I watch ‚CSI‘ or ‚Law & Order,‘ where I have to follow the crime. If I can’t turn my head off during that, I know I’ve really got a problem.

Marriage destroyed my relationship with two wonderful men.

Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed.

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.

We cannot learn men from books.

Fame is ultimately about the cycles of desire and how to do away with them or manage them well.

My general attitude to life is to enjoy every minute of every day. I never do anything with a feeling of, ‚Oh God, I’ve got to do this today.‘

Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.

I believe that having a spiritual life is so important in everybody’s life.

If a man be gloomy let him keep to himself. No one has the right to go croaking about society, or what is worse, looking as if he stifled grief.

There are going to be things I’m not going to be great at, times when I make mistakes, 100%.

To become ‚unique,‘ the challenge is to fight the hardest battle which anyone can imagine until you reach your destination.

I’ve learned over the years that when I go to that place of passion within me, there’s no force in the universe that can interfere with my completing a project.

Prison was the best thing that ever happened to me.

In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.

I never saw myself as a folk singer.

I think I mainly climb mountains because I get a great deal of enjoyment out of it. I never attempt to analyze these things too thoroughly, but I think that all mountaineers do get a great deal of satisfaction out of overcoming some challenge which they think is very difficult for them, or which perhaps may be a little dangerous.

I’m grateful for always this moment, the now, no matter what form it takes.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?

I always was that person who was hard on myself and challenged myself no matter what I was doing, whether it was passing third grade or playing basketball.

Every breath we take, every step we make, can be filled with peace, joy and serenity.

There are no limitations to the mind except those we acknowledge.

A man’s interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town.

There’s no reality except the one contained within us. That’s why so many people live an unreal life. They take images outside them for reality and never allow the world within them to assert itself.

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

Even as you make progress, you need the discipline to keep from backtracking and sabotaging the success as it’s happening.

If you don’t live your life, then who will?

And above all things, never think that you’re not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you at your own reckoning.

I worked with someone who told me they’d never like me. But for some reason, I just felt like I needed her approval. So I started changing myself to please her. It made me stop being social and friendly. I was so unhappy.

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.

A man is born alone and dies alone; and he experiences the good and bad consequences of his karma alone; and he goes alone to hell or the Supreme abode.

Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.

Somebody’s boring me. I think it’s me.

Get up tomorrow early in the morning, and earlier than you did today, and do the best that you can. Always stay near me, for tomorrow I will have much to do and more than I ever had, and tomorrow blood will leave my body above the breast.

Solitude is painful when one is young, but delightful when one is more mature.

There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.

Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.

I am never satisfied with myself and that is what keeps me going – I have no post-satisfaction.

I think the healthy way to live is to make friends with the beast inside oneself, and that means not the beast but the shadow. The dark side of one’s nature. Have fun with it and you know, is to accept everything about ourselves.

Early on in my life, I had a broken soul. I was abused by my father, abandoned by my mother and ended up in a destructive first marriage. By the time I was 23, I was broken in my soul. I didn’t know how to think right. I felt wrong about everything. But God stepped into my life, and I came out on the other side and didn’t even smell like smoke.

He who gives away shall have real gain. He who subdues himself shall be free; he shall cease to be a slave of passions. The righteous man casts off evil, and by rooting out lust, bitterness, and illusion do we reach Nirvana.

Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.

Power over others is weakness disguised as strength.

Smiling is very important. If we are not able to smile, then the world will not have peace. It is not by going out for a demonstration against nuclear missiles that we can bring about peace. It is with our capacity of smiling, breathing, and being peace that we can make peace.

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

As long as you blame someone or something else – something outside you that’s bigger than you are – as the source of your problems, the problems won’t get solved.

I’m very, very serious – I’m serious enough not to take myself too seriously. That means I can be completely wedded to the moment. But when I leave that moment, I want to be completely wedded to the next moment.