Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.

Anybody can be specific and obvious. That’s always been the easy way. It’s not that it’s so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious; it’s just that there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, to be specific and obvious about.

I’m not confused. I’m just well mixed.

We don’t get to know people when they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are like.

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

Everything is clearer when you’re in love.

It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death.

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.

In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself.

Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?

Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.

It’s hard to be clear about who you are when you are carrying around a bunch of baggage from the past. I’ve learned to let go and move more quickly into the next place.

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

While on top of Everest, I looked across the valley towards the great peak Makalu and mentally worked out a route about how it could be climbed. It showed me that even though I was standing on top of the world, it wasn’t the end of everything. I was still looking beyond to other interesting challenges.

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them.

I do believe that in order to be a successful negotiator that as a diplomat, you have to be able to put yourself into the other person’s shoes. Unless you can understand what is motivating them, you are never going to be able to figure out how to solve a particular problem.

Except for the young or very happy, I can’t say I am sorry for anyone who dies.

A lot of people like to do certain things, but they’re not that good at it. Keep going through the things that you like to do, until you find something that you actually seem to be extremely good at. It can be anything.

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.

In a magazine, one can get – from cover to cover – 15 to 20 different ideas about life and how to live it.

I have written too much history to have faith in it; and if anyone thinks I’m wrong, I am inclined to agree with him.

At first when I heard about climate change, I was a climate denier. I didn’t think it was happening. Because if there really was an existential crisis like that, that would threaten our civilisation, we wouldn’t be focusing on anything else. That would be our first priority. So I didn’t understand how that added up.

In my entire life, any time I’ve ever lost something, I’ve gotten something even better going around the next corner. It’s like one door closes and another door opens. As long as I can walk through the produce section in every grocery store in this country and eat the grapes that they’re going to throw away, I know I can be fine.

Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.

Life, an age to the miserable, and a moment to the happy.

I used to go away for weeks in a state of confusion.

An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.

He who cannot give anything away cannot feel anything either.

The good things of prosperity are to be wished; but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.

We forfeit three-quarters of ourselves in order to be like other people.

But O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes.

I’m so happy I discovered early how wonderful music makes me feel.

I’m entirely interested in people, and also other creatures and beings, but especially in people, and I tend to read them by emotional field more than anything. So I have a special interest in what they’re thinking and who they are and who’s hiding behind those eyes and how did he get there, and what’s the story, really?

The best part about being in your thirties is you know what works for you.

It’s useful to go out of this world and see it from the perspective of another one.

It is only to the individual that a soul is given.

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!

Comedians are sociologists. We’re pointing out stuff that the general public doesn’t even stop to think about, looking at life in slow-motion and questioning everything we see.

I learned, when I look in the mirror and tell my story, that I should be myself and not peep whatever everybody is doing.

We have an obligation to help people that cannot help themselves. The mentally retarded, the physically retarded, et cetera.

When I was two, a dragonfly flew near me. A man knocked it to the ground and trod on it. I remember crying because I’d caused the dragonfly to be killed.

Every loss of life is terrible.

Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories – and telling other people a somewhat different version of our stories.

What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.

It’s an endless proving of myself, that I really am a musician, that I have something to offer in the room. That women can be musicians, women can be rock stars, women can be more than an objectified idea of a pop star.

For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.

I can’t read the newspaper without crying. I’m easily affected by horrible events, you see.

It put our energies to sleep and made visionaries of us – dreamers and indolent… It is good to begin life poor; it is good to begin life rich – these are wholesome; but to begin it prospectively rich! The man who has not experienced it cannot imagine the curse of it.

I knew I wanted to do something creative. I didn’t think I’d have the luxury of doing something like that, because I didn’t know anyone who had pursued anything they really adored, but I had dreams for singing or writing.

To live is to find out for yourself what is true, and you can do this only when there is freedom, when there is continuous revolution inwardly, within yourself.

When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

If thy brother wrongs thee, remember not so much his wrong-doing, but more than ever that he is thy brother.

The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.

A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.

There are a lot of people who don’t know me and what I am all about.

It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.

No one can live without relationship. You may withdraw into the mountains, become a monk, a sannyasi, wander off into the desert by yourself, but you are related. You cannot escape from that absolute fact. You cannot exist in isolation.

Really I feel less keen about the Army every day. I think the Church would suit me better.

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.