There is no coming to consciousness without pain.

Here’s something that’s contrary to popular belief: I actually don’t like thinking. I think people think I like to think a lot. And I don’t. I do not like to think at all.

It’s better to be unhappy alone than unhappy with someone – so far.

The darkness is really out there. It’s not something that’s in my head, just. It’s in my work because it’s in the world.

I want everybody to understand that I am an American Negro first before I am a member of any political party.

Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.

How pathetically scanty my self-knowledge is compared with, say, my knowledge of my room. There is no such thing as observation of the inner world, as there is of the outer world.

What I want for my fans and for the world, for anyone who feels pain, is to lean into that pain and embrace it as much as they can and begin the healing process.

Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future.

Where much is expected from an individual, he may rise to the level of events and make the dream come true.

Boys do cry, but I don’t think I shed a tear for a good chunk of my teenage years.

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’m giving all that I have in this life. I’m opening up my notebook, and I’m saying everything in there out loud.

I have no time to think about other writers. I am too busy with my own problems.

The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you.

As I followed my dream – stayed in-Spirit, that is, inspired – I made more money in the first year after I gave up my employment than I had made in the previous 35 years of my life.

Fame doesn’t fulfill you. It warms you a bit, but that warmth is temporary.

It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.

The lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master.

Had I been a great athlete, I’m not sure I would have even gone into coaching. I may have turned out feeling that my life ended when my athletic career ended, as happens so many times with various athletes.

I remember, when I was a young guy in the SEAL teams, I was very afraid of making mistakes and looking stupid or doing dumb things and getting a bad reputation.

I went through a period when I felt my film characters were having more fun than I was. It might partly explain why I ended up tattooed or doing certain extreme things in my life.

I’m not very ambitious at all.

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.

One must verify or expel his doubts, and convert them into the certainty of Yes or NO.

A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.

Few men would dare to read their own autobiography if all their deeds were recorded in it; few can look back upon their entire career without a blush.

I think it’s healthy for a person to be nervous. It means you care – that you work hard and want to give a great performance. You just have to channel that nervous energy into the show.

Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.

I’d like to believe that the people that have supported me in my work or identified with me in films, the people that feel they know me, they do and they don’t have misconceptions – they understand. I believe that.

Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.

I’ll never, ever be full. I’ll always be hungry. Obviously, I’m not talking about food. Growing up, I had nothing for such a long time. Someone told me a long time ago, and I’ve never forgotten it, ‚Once you’ve ever been hungry, really, really hungry, then you’ll never, ever be full.‘

One ought to hold on to one’s heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.

Sometimes you have to take two steps back to take ten forward.

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us.

I love money because I’ve earned it. I won sixty G’s with my first knockout – and the week before, I was collecting social welfare.

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

Satan wants us to constantly focus on everything that is wrong with us and look at how far we still have to go. But God desires for us to rejoice in how far we have already come.

Imagine your family finally making it from nothing to something, and finally getting things going, and finally buying a beautiful house and taking care of your children – and the next day, it’s completely all gone. Zero. Boom. Flat broke. So that’s when I had to man up.

None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not.

Every thought you produce, anything you say, any action you do, it bears your signature.

People who say they don’t care what people think are usually desperate to have people think they don’t care what people think.

The nobler a man, the harder it is for him to suspect inferiority in others.

The question of whether or not there is a God or truth or reality or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by books, by priests, philosopher’s or saviours. Nobody and nothing can answer the question but you yourself, and that is why you must know yourself – Immaturity lies only in total ignorance of self.

We all have a tendency to avoid our weaknesses. When we do that, we never progress or get any better.

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

I don’t think consensus-building politics is what I’m meant to be doing.

Mothers and daughters generally have fairly complex relationships, and ours was made much more so by Mother’s illness. She had Parkinson’s disease, which was not diagnosed for a long time… All that made me very self-protective, because for one thing, I didn’t want to get trapped.

If we are to be happy, we must first react against our tendency to follow the line of least resistance, a tendency that causes us either to remain as we are, or to look primarily to activities external to ourselves for what will provide new impetus to our lives.

Don’t get older just to get wiser. If you get older, you will be wiser, I believe that – if you dare. But get older because it’s fun!

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

My work is the only ground I’ve ever had to stand on. To put it bluntly, I seem to have a whole superstructure with no foundation, but I’m working on the foundation.

Around every corner, always protect the engine that powers you.

Every single one of us has a few months here or there that feel like dark months.

For me, ‚risky‘ is revealing what really happened in my life through music. Risky is writing confessional songs and telling the true story about a person with enough details so everyone knows who that person is.

You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment.

I’m reflective only in the sense that I learn to move forward. I reflect with a purpose.

Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.