These words dropped into my childish mind as if you should accidentally drop a ring into a deep well. I did not think of them much at the time, but there came a day in my life when the ring was fished up out of the well, good as new.

Last year we said, ‚Things can’t go on like this‘, and they didn’t, they got worse.

What interests me in life is curiosity, challenges, the good fight with its victories and defeats.

I have trouble with letting go. That’s my problem.

You cannot let where you are today cause you to get stuck. I’m going to be my best right now. That’s what faith is all about.

How one life turns out is not dependent on what people do to us or what they don’t do for us.

Do something everyday for no other reason than you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test.

I was in a terrible mess in my childhood.

The happiest people in the world are those who feel absolutely terrific about themselves, and this is the natural outgrowth of accepting total responsibility for every part of their life.

My moms always told me, ‚How long you gonna play the victim?‘ I can say I’m mad and I hate everything, but nothing really changes until I change myself.

Everybody always laughs because I feel so much more comfortable with, like, a giant paper bag on my whole body and paint on my face. Sometimes I try really hard to take it all off. But inevitably what’s underneath is still not a straight edge. And I don’t think it ever will be.

Most people want to avoid pain, and discipline is usually painful.

Questioning my spiritual life has always been germane to what I was writing. Always. It’s because I’m not quite an atheist and it worries me. There’s that little bit that holds on: ‚Well, I’m almost an atheist. Give me a couple of months.‘

If the other person injures you, you may forget the injury; but if you injure him you will always remember.

Every President I think I’ve ever known, except Truman, has thought they didn’t quite get done what they wanted done. And toward the end of their Administrations, they were disappointed and wished they had done some things differently.

Mozart’s music is so pure and beautiful that I see it as a reflection of the inner beauty of the universe.

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.

Vulnerability is basically uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.

You need to understand what works best for your own body.

Naturally, everybody has certain things they wish they hadn’t done in life. They wish they hadn’t kicked their dog when they were ten or something.

I never looked at my mantel and envisioned an MVP trophy sitting there. This is pretty crazy.

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

I think, for years, people have been pushed down by religion, and I don’t say that disrespectfully, but they’ve been shown a God that you can’t measure up to.

I remember at the age of five travelling on a trolley car with my mother past a group of women on a picket line at a textile plant, seeing them being viciously beaten by security people. So that kind of thing stayed with me.

To deal with individual human needs at the everyday level can be noble sometimes.

Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best.

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

The world is put back by the death of every one who has to sacrifice the development of his or her peculiar gifts to conventionality.

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.

The work is the work. The work is not me.

What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.

Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.

I think there is a lot made out of age, and what age you feel.

I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate.

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

Without being the most confident person in the world, I think I am the right person for Liverpool.

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 admire people who destroy themselves.

I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

I went through a lot of battles in high school.

You’re not going to scare me into being somebody I don’t want to be.

I think so many people live their whole life in fear and doubt and shame.

There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.

I just really believe people have to get hungry. I think maybe what we need to do, instead of trying to stuff our beliefs down people’s throats, is just pray for them to really be hungry and to see their neediness.

Whatever has happened in my quest for innovation has been part of my quest for immaculate reality.

Some people carry their heart in their head and some carry their head in their heart. The trick is to keep them apart yet working together.

Many people, especially young people, would like to be more independent and on their own. But it is very difficult and they suffer from feelings of isolation. I think that is one reason why young readers support my work.

The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.

The experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of itself in matter and as matter, in mind and as mind, in emotion, as emotion, etc.

I always wanted to know, and I always used to daydream, about what it would be like to stand on a really big stage and sing songs for a lot of people, songs that I had written… Daydreaming was kind of my No. 1 thing when I was little, because I didn’t have much of a social life going on.

The way I approach this thing, when I started to get my head screwed on straight and really trying to make something of myself as an artist, when I was 19 or 20, it became more about function for me. Like, what is this song doing to you? What is the function of this type of artform? What is it doing?

If you choose to do something, attack it. You can hate me, but there’s one thing you can’t say about me – that I didn’t attack it.

If you’re going to be a winner in life, you have to constantly go beyond your best.

Adopt responsibility for your own well-being, try to put your family together, try to serve your community, try to seek for eternal truth… That’s the sort of thing that can ground you in your life, enough so that you can withstand the difficulty of life.

I think I’m like most people – we fear the unknown and the things that have yet to come to pass, which are the very things that don’t deserve to be feared. When you give God complete control, it’s very hard not to be fearless.

I seldom end up where I wanted to go, but almost always end up where I need to be.

I was a kind of hyper-intense person in my twenties and very impatient.

One of the signs of passing youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as we take our place among them.

When I was younger, I was testing myself and questioning everything, but now it’s less about that and more about these are the years of my life with my family.

Someone told me something that stuck with me: ‚You have to envision your life, and then go backwards.‘ I’ve been living by that motto for a while, so I see where I need to be. Now I’m just backtracking and trying to get back up there.

Knowing that you are going to die is, I suspect, the beginning of wisdom.