They would not find me changed from him they knew – only more sure of all I thought was true.

I don’t see that my majority opinions are going to be undone.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

I feel the emotion that life conjures up and the songs I write get me closer to my feelings and realising who I am. It’s a natural process.

I used to get into a lot of fights.

You know, most people really don’t know me.

Sometimes if you got a problem deep rooted in your life, it takes a little bit of time to overcome it in that area.

A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.

Poetry and lyrics are very similar. Making words bounce off a page.

Part of me suspects that I’m a loser, and the other part of me thinks I’m God Almighty.

I shall the effect of this good lesson keeps as watchman to my heart.

The thing about Jiu Jitsu is it is also not for everybody. It can be very humiliating and humbling. If you have a hard time dealing with the fact that someone smaller than you may be able to tap you out, it is going to be difficult.

Although I don’t have a prescription for what others should do, I know I have been very fortunate and feel a responsibility to give back to society in a very significant way.

The formation of one’s character ought to be everyone’s chief aim.

Love is a better teacher than duty.

The mind of a 19-year-old is very different from the mind of a 26-year-old. You grow. You get into better relationships. You experience more, meet more people, better people. But when you’re in a dark hole at an earlier point in your life – you write about the mindset you’re in at that moment.

I think my vice would be outdoing myself.

History shows us that in times of people feeling like they are in need of some sort of rebellion or protests, the artists rise because the poetry we create about pain and its relationship to culture in the world begins to soothe and heal people who are feeling confused or afraid.

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.

Don’t ever forget two things I’m going to tell you. One, don’t believe everything that’s written about you. Two, don’t pick up too many checks.

I am not happy, and the quest for happiness as a principal objective is not part of my world. Of course, ever since I can remember, I have done what I felt like doing.

It’s like, remember who you always were, where you came from, who your parents were, how they raised you. Because that authentic self is going to follow you all through life, so make sure that it’s solid so it’s something that you can hold on and be proud of for the rest of your life.

Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.

If I’m the people’s poet, then I ought to be in people’s hands – and, I hope, in their heart.

Still round the corner there may wait, A new road or a secret gate.

Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself.

As a kid from Compton, you can get all the success in the world and still question your worth.

When I was into my 30s, I became increasingly depressed by rejection letters. I had had the feeling that by the time I was 30, I would be established. But I was not at all. By the time of ‚Lives of Girls and Women,‘ I was into my 40s and I had become more thin-skinned.

We all have done something unethical.

In the practice of tolerance, one’s enemy is the best teacher.

The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.

This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.

The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt.

Life is too short for long-term grudges.

When you start to realise how much of what you’ve constructed of yourself is based on deception and lies, that is a horrifying realisation.

Feels good to try, but playing a father, I’m getting a little older. I see now that I’m taking it more serious and I do want that lifestyle.

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 am an ordinary man who worked hard to develop the talent I was given. I believed in myself, and I believe in the goodness of others.

The highest reward that God gives us for good work is the ability to do better work.

You can be happy where you are.

Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.

Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they’ve got a second.

There is nothing happens to any person but what was in his power to go through with.

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.

It’s certainly not wrong to want to be a better person. God gave us that desire.

I feel real good because it’s about representing the young world and how to uplift each other and how to push us to be greater and make sure we don’t fall or get trapped or get in trouble, you know what I mean. Stay focused, you know what I mean.

The most intense conflicts, if overcome, leave behind a sense of security and calm that is not easily disturbed. It is just these intense conflicts and their conflagration which are needed to produce valuable and lasting results.

People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.

I don’t think I’ve ever read poetry, ever.

It’s amazing: I am a New Yorker. It’s strange; I never thought I would be.

One must marry one’s feelings to one’s beliefs and ideas. That is probably the only way to achieve a measure of harmony in one’s life.

You can have the platinum album. But, you know, when you still feel like you haven’t quite found your place in the world, it kind of gives a crazy offset.

It’s hard for anybody who’s been with me not to feel starved for affection when I’m making love to my ideas. Maybe it’s not meant for me to settle down and be married.

I change my mind a lot. I usually don’t agree with what I say very much. I’m an awful liar.

You hesitate to stab me with a word, and know not – silence is the sharper sword.

In order to exist, man must rebel, but rebellion must respect the limits that it discovers in itself – limits where minds meet, and in meeting, begin to exist.

There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood over the attempted injury.

Me, as a person, I grow. I’m like a chameleon. You know? That is a gift and a curse for me. But more so a gift, because it never puts me in a box.

God is more interested in your future and your relationships than you are.

I went on all over the States, ranting poems to enthusiastic audiences that, the week before, had been equally enthusiastic about lectures on Railway Development or the Modern Turkish Essay.

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.