There is no such things as ‚best‘ in the world of individuals.

My life as a child did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel and bitter things.

The credit of advancing science has always been due to individuals and never to the age.

Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged.

To some extent I liken slavery to death.

When you have kids, you see life through different eyes. You feel love more deeply and are maybe a little more compassionate. It’s inevitable that that would make its way into your songwriting.

Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.

Look at situations from all angles, and you will become more open.

Experience which was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young.

There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look.

Like a pianist runs her fingers over the keys, I’ll search my mind for what to say. Now, the poem may want you to write it. And then sometimes you see a situation and think, ‚I’d like to write about that.‘ Those are two different ways of being approached by a poem, or approaching a poem.

I’ve never bought into any sort of hard and fast, this-box/that-box characterization. People are individuals. Yes, they may be expected to be a particular way. But that doesn’t mean they’re going to be that way.

How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.

There are no big problems, there are just a lot of little problems.

Everything is clearer when you’re in love.

I never admire another’s fortune so much that I became dissatisfied with my own.

To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.

I’m not somebody that thinks about destiny and fate, but I don’t walk away from it when something unfolds.

I think I do myself a disservice by comparing myself to Steve Jobs and Walt Disney and human beings that we’ve seen before. It should be more like Willy Wonka… and welcome to my chocolate factory.

I have met 18 million youth, and each wants to be unique.

The way people look at me these days – that’s the same way I looked at President Obama before I met him. We tend to forget that people who’ve attained a certain position are human.

A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.

The infinitely little have a pride infinitely great.

I don’t see myself as ever being like anybody else.

Nothing fortifies scepticism more than the fact that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.

I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done.

A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant.

It’s possible – you can never know – that the universe exists only for me. If so, it’s sure going well for me, I must admit.

It is foolish to tear one’s hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness.

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.

When I see a story, I ask: is this something I’d like to be in? Is this something I’d like to see? And if I’d like to see it, would I like to tell it?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

There was a while when I was feeling like, ‚Damn, if I’d just been born black, I would not have to go through all this‘.

People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.

There will always be something to ruin our lives, it all depends on what or which finds us first. We are always ripe and ready to be taken.

The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

Everybody believes in something and everybody, by virtue of the fact that they believe in something, uses that something to support their own existence.

The universe is wider than our views of it.

You know when you’re young and you see a play in high school, and the guys all have gray in their hair and they’re trying to be old men and they have no idea what that’s like? It’s just that stupid the other way around.

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

I have a hard time figuring out what kind of box to put me in, too, because I don’t know exactly what’s going on around me or why. But I need to stay outside of boxes because then I can look at what’s inside of them without being part of them.

Advice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey’s end.

Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.

I’m interested in what motivates individuals to participate in atrocious acts to support their ideological identification.

There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Movies are fun, but they are no cure for cancer.

Surely a long life must be somewhat tedious, since we are forced to call in so many trifling things to help rid us of our time, which will never return.

Well, Art is Art, isn’t it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know.

Measure your wealth by what you’d have left if you lost all your money.

I don’t think there’s anything unique about human intelligence.

War does not determine who is right – only who is left.

You can’t have a rigid view that all new taxes are evil.

I like some animals more than some people, some people more than some animals.

It is not possible to eat me without insisting that I sing praises of my devourer?

The Public is merely a multiplied ‚me.‘

Men freely believe that which they desire.

Little things console us because little things afflict us.

Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!

I think everyone’s inherently snobbish. Things that are very popular are not taken seriously, because the snobbish side of one says, ‚Well, if everyone likes it it can’t be that good.‘ Whereas if only I and a couple of other people like it, then it must be really something special.

I walk every day, and I look at the mountains and the fields and the small city, and I say: ‚Oh my God, what a blessing.‘ Then you realise it’s important to put it in a context beyond this woman, this man, this city, this country, this universe.