The true identity theft is not financial. It’s not in cyberspace. It’s spiritual. It’s been taken.

I have an expression I use as I’ve gone around the world through my career: ‚You never tell another man or woman what’s in their interest. They know their interest better than you know their interest.‘

I put Catholic guilt to work pretty good for a rich rock star.

For years I wanted to be older, and now I am.

To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance.

You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection.

I don’t think a lot of people know personally who I am.

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I am, which is my life, the power to create.

I’m nobody, who are you?

I always kind of see how I want things to be better, and I’m generally not happy with how things are or the level of service that we’re providing for people or the quality of the teams that we built. But if you look at this objectively, we’re doing so well on so many of these things. I think it’s important to have gratitude for that.

I’m not this horrible, evil person.

Conversion is not my intention. Changing religion is not easy. You may develop some kind of confusion or difficulties.

To me, a leader is someone who holds her- or himself accountable for finding potential in people and processes. And so what I think is really important is sustainability.

All that spirits desire, spirits attain.

The best thing I did was to choose the right heroes.

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

A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.

Knowledge cultivates your seeds and does not sow in your seeds.

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.

The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.

For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.

You just have to have a simple faith.

I already am a product.

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

What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.

I no longer feel attracted to the well-made novel. I want to write the story that will zero in and give you intense, but not connected, moments of experience. I guess that’s the way I see life. People remake themselves bit by bit and do things they don’t understand.

Memories are thoughts that arise. They’re not realities. Only when you believe that they are real, then they have the power over you. But when you realize it’s just another thought arising about the past, then you can have a spacious relationship with that thought. The thought no longer has you in its grip.

If we had more hell in the pulpit, we would have less hell in the pew.

The pagan loves the earth in order to enjoy it and confine himself within it; the Christian in order to make it purer and draw from it the strength to escape from it.

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

If I went back to my 20-year-old self, what I would tell my 20-year-old self is, ‚You don’t know anything.‘ Because everyone, when they’re young, they think they know what’s going on in the world, and you don’t.

It’s a mystery. That’s the first thing that interests me about the idea of God. If there is one, it’s mysterious and powerful and awesome to even consider the concept, and you have to take it seriously.

A fanatic is a man who consciously over compensates a secret doubt.

To add value to others, one must first value others.

If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole?

The difficulties you meet will resolve themselves as you advance. Proceed, and light will dawn, and shine with increasing clearness on your path.

If we live a self-directed, self-motivated, self-centered life, always needing to get our own way, then we’re going to be miserable. In fact, many times we believe it’s our problems that are making us unhappy when, in reality, it’s because we’re focused on ourselves!

One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer.

Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think the long sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age.

I’ve always been – you know, my personality is motivating and encouraging. And so I’m just being who God made me to be.

I have offended God and mankind because my work didn’t reach the quality it should have.

Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace. Money will come if we seek first the Kingdom of God – the rest will be given.

I’m not a natural performer or exhibitionist. When I was younger, I hated the focus, and it made me feel strange.

Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.

Prayer is simply talking to God like a friend and should be the easiest thing we do each day.

It doesn’t matter who likes you or doesn’t like you, all that matters is that God likes you. He accepts you, he approves of you.

In order to exist, man must rebel, but rebellion must respect the limits that it discovers in itself – limits where minds meet, and in meeting, begin to exist.

So I say to you, Ask and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.

After it is all over, the religion of man is his most important possession.

There’s a long way to fall when you pretend that you’re so far away from the earth, far away from reality, floating in a bubble that’s protected by fame or success. It’s scary, and it’s the thing I fear the most: to be swallowed up by that bubble. It can be poison to you, fame.

Do not give in too much to feelings. A overly sensitive heart is an unhappy possession on this shaky earth.

Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one’s weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.

Control your own destiny! Control your own destiny!

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

There’s only one effectively redemptive sacrifice, the sacrifice of self-will to make room for the knowledge of God.

I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among those in the second half of life – that is to say, over 35 – there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life.

We’re all capable of mistakes, but I do not care to enlighten you on the mistakes we may or may not have made.