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.

Individuals need to be willing to face truth about their attitudes, behaviors, even what we want out of life.

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

We are second-hand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences, and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves: nothing original, pristine, clear.

Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.

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.

You can’t talk your way out of problems you behave yourself into.

In this business you have to develop a thick skin, but I’m always going to feel everything. It’s my nature.

I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

In too many communities, too many young men of color are left behind and seen only as objects of fear. Through initiatives like My Brother’s Keeper, I’m personally committed to changing both perception and reality.

You should never give up your inner self.

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

It’s different from being 21 and you think there’s endless amount of opportunities. At 33, the ending is much, much closer.

I have never felt more confident in myself, more clear on who I am as a woman. But I am constantly thinking about my own health and making sure that I’m eating right and getting exercise and watching the aches and pains. I want to be this really fly 80-90-year old.

Passions are vices or virtues to their highest powers.

I always thought it was wrong for me to take credit for the work that I did. I don’t think that anymore.

It definitely has learning a lesson about the way you’re living your life. I wouldn’t compare our movie to that, but it has a structure where it’s about a man who doesn’t appreciate all that he has and finds out at the end that life has been great and he has to enjoy that.

Everything I’ve been thinking, every vision, even down to every shot I throw, it just ends up here in reality. Whether it was in a fight and how to react or whether it was in a stadium with screaming fans or whether I was in a fancy car or the best clothes ever, I always put myself somewhere.

We are wiser than we know.

The mouth obeys poorly when the heart murmurs.

When I was writing ‚Kitchen Confidential,‘ I was in my 40s, I had never paid rent on time, I was 10 years behind on my taxes, I had never owned my own furniture or a car.

Most people wouldn’t know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.

How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god.

Even paranoids have real enemies.

To be honest with you, when I got into this I never thought about reviews. I never thought about what people would say about me. I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

The only difference between Benito and Bad Bunny is 16 million followers on Instagram. And the money that Bad Bunny has in the bank. Benito had, like, $7. The numbers are different, but I’m still the same. Even my insecurities remain the same.

When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.

If every choice you make comes from an honest place, you’re solid, and nothing anybody can say about you can rock you or change your opinion.

If you realize all the time what’s kind of wonderful – that is, if we expand our experience into wilder and wilder regions of experience – every once in a while, we have these integrations when everything’s pulled together into a unification, in which it turns out to be simpler than it looked before.

Let a man get up and say, Behold, this is the truth, and instantly I perceive a sandy cat filching a piece of fish in the background. Look, you have forgotten the cat, I say.

Unbeing dead isn’t being alive.

Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.

Once you begin to fall off the track and believe you breathe different air to everyone else, you’re doomed; you’re finished.

When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion.

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You’re on your own, and you know what you know. And you are the guy who’ll decide where to go.

When you make the finding yourself – even if you’re the last person on Earth to see the light – you’ll never forget it.

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.

I never deny. I never contradict. I sometimes forget.

My lectures, based on Islamic teachings, were on various subjects. Some of the titles were, ‚The Intoxication of Life,‘ ‚The Purpose of Life,‘ ‚The Real Cause of Man’s Distress,‘ ‚The Journey to the Goal in Life,‘ and, one of my favorites, ‚The Heart of Man.‘ They contained important insights that spoke to something deep inside me.

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

However far back I go into my childhood, nothing seems to me more characteristic of, or more familiar in, my interior economy than the appetite or irresistible demand for some ‚Unique all-sufficing and necessary reality.‘

If you leave the smallest corner of your head vacant for a moment, other people’s opinions will rush in from all quarters.

Everything’s fine today, that is our illusion.

Some people can just let things go, but I can’t, especially if there’s something that worries me or makes me sad.

Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends.

I’ve learned that usually, the less I know about other people, the better off I am.

The more in harmony with yourself you are, the more joyful you are and the more faithful you are. Faith is not to disconnect you from reality – it connects you to reality.

Narrow your life down to this moment. Your life situation may be full of problems – most life situations are – but find out if you have a problem at this moment. Do you have a problem now?

I always have a full-length mirror next to the camera when I’m doing publicity stills. That way, I know how I look.

The most deeply personal of my works are the non-fiction works, the autobiographical works, because there, I’m talking about myself very directly.

To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.

I used to let other people’s struggles affect my happiness. If they weren’t happy, there was no way I was going to be happy. The opposite was also true: If I wasn’t happy, I didn’t want anyone around me to be happy.

There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.

We see the world not as it is, but as we are.

The man with insight enough to admit his limitations comes nearest to perfection.

In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us.

I thought I would try to be gay for a while, but I’m just more sexually attracted to women. But I’m really glad that I found a few gay friends, because it totally saved me from becoming a monk or something.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

Adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is most beneficial to us.