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‘.

I put up my thumb and it blotted out the planet Earth.

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

On the other hand, you have different fingers.

At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures – be what he is. And, above all, accept these things.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m as famous for my wheelchair and disabilities as I am for my discoveries.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination – and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past – are real and must be addressed.

Getting recognized is insane. It just blows my mind. Like, someone who you don’t know at all can just be like, ‚Oh my God – are you Billie?‘

I’m trying to keep a level head. You have to be careful out in the world. It’s so easy to get turned.

A man’s as miserable as he thinks he is.

To meditate means to go home to yourself. Then you know how to take care of the things that are happening inside you, and you know how to take care of the things that happen around you.

You simply have to accept that your demons are a part of you.

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.

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.

I was ashamed to admit I was hipped to the idea of acting. That’s why I started in with the props.

I can simply tell you that since I was a kid, I didn’t like to look like anyone else.

Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.

What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.

Genius is a potential that lives within you and every other human being. You have many moments of genius in your lifetime. These are the times when you have a uniquely brilliant idea and implement it even if only you are aware of how fantastic it is.

There are certain things that bother me and certain things that don’t. Personal attacks on me? I think I’m just so used to it.

The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.

When thou art above measure angry, bethink thee how momentary is man’s life.

There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity.

So what is discord at one level of your being is harmony at another level.

Whenever a fellow tells me he’s bipartisan, I know he’s going to vote against me.

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.

Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is.

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.

Almost everybody is born a genius and buried an idiot.

In terms of doing work and in terms of learning and evolving as a person, you just grow more when you get more people’s perspectives… I really try and live the mission of the company and… keep everything else in my life extremely simple.

When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That’s relativity.

Of course, like anybody I repeat myself endlessly, but I don’t know that I’m doing it, usually.

I’d always somehow felt slightly as if I’d been born in the wrong country.

A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants.

It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But… it is better to be good than to be ugly.

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.

When you single out any particular group of people for secondary citizenship status, that’s a violation of basic human rights.

We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put something before us to prevent us seeing it.

The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.

I’ve watched a lot of people who became famous who completely change and I think it’s because they tend to believe all the hype that’s out there. I don’t think there’s that much hype about me.

An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.

Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.

I just dress like… I’m an old black man. Sorry! Like I’m an old Jewish black man. I just dress like it’s still the ’50s.

I tend to believe that audiences are relatively well-balanced people.

It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting.

I have had fun being who I became, so to speak.

I was always very curious as a young man about why older writers who I met seemed so indifferent to what was going on, whereas I, in my 20s, was reading everything. Everything seemed important. But they were only interested in the writers they admired when they were young, and I didn’t understand it then, but now, now I understand it.

I grew up in a very nice house in Houston, went to private school all my life and I’ve never even been to the ‚hood. Not that there’s anything wrong with the ‚hood.

If you deny people their own voice, you’ll have no idea of who they were.

And obviously, from our own personal point of view, the principal challenge is a personal challenge.

In one day, I have times where I’m feeling great, I feel like I love my life, and then 2:30 rolls around and I’m the angriest man alive. My wife sees it.

I think the idea of art kills creativity.

It is normal to give away a little of one’s life in order not to lose it all.

The bad fortune of the good turns their faces up to heaven; the good fortune of the bad bows their heads down to the earth.

I cannot always control what goes on outside. But I can always control what goes on inside.

I don’t blame the average seventeen-year-old punk-rock kid for calling me a sellout. I understand that. And maybe when they grow up a little bit, they’ll realize there’s more things to life than living out your rock & roll identity so righteously.

We do not know what is really good or bad fortune.

You have to understand that people that are hurting are going to criticize.

I have no delusions about my likability in every scenario. I know that in order to get things done the way you want them, oftentimes your position will be unpopular.

This isn’t life in the fast lane, it’s life in the oncoming traffic.