To be angry is to revenge the faults of others on ourselves.

A lot of times, I run a thought experiment: ‚If I were not at Facebook, what would I be doing to make the world more open?‘

When it comes to our everyday habits, it’s important to ask: ‚Am I putting God first?‘

If you’re not ready for everything, you’re not ready for anything.

College isn’t in everyone’s hearts. I am living proof, though, that school doesn’t mess up your plans. It gives you more experiences to write about.

If I feel good about my parenting, I have no interest in judging other people’s choices. If I feel good about my body, I don’t go around making fun of other people’s weight or appearance. We’re hard on each other because we’re using each other as a launching pad out of our own perceived deficiency.

My whole life is a theater piece.

In my later years, I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I’ve worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.

I had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss.

At one point I learned transcendental meditation. This was 30-something years ago. It took me back to the way that I naturally was as a child growing up way in the country, rarely seeing people. I was in that state of oneness with creation and it was as if I didn’t exist except as a part of everything.

It is in self-limitation that a master first shows himself.

Make bold choices and make mistakes. It’s all those things that add up to the person you become.

Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.

The truth is, I’ve never fooled anyone. I’ve let men sometimes fool themselves.

I am not a particularly thick-skinned person.

Confession of errors is like a broom which sweeps away the dirt and leaves the surface brighter and clearer. I feel stronger for confession.

People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.

You’ll never do a whole lot unless you’re brave enough to try.

Once you start doing only what you’ve already proven you can do, you’re on the road to death.

I don’t write so much now. I’m getting on 33, pot belly and creeping dementia.

Wisdom allows nothing to be good that will not be so forever; no man to be happy but he that needs no other happiness than what he has within himself; no man to be great or powerful that is not master of himself.

May we so love as never to have occasion to repent of our love!

We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.

I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up – they have no holidays.

If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.

I have spent many years of my life in opposition, and I rather like the role.

I don’t have any secrets I need kept any more.

For me, often, there’s such a cloud of melancholia about knowing I’m going to have to leave my daughter on her own. I don’t know what age that is going to be, thank God. It just doubles me up in grief.

It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to trust your team. It’s a lesson I’ve had to relearn quite a few times.

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.

I just have a thing in my brain that when I’m about to do something that’s genuine or authentic, I think of it in song form. I’ll be like, ‚Yo, this is a human emotion that no one talks about.‘

When I am angry I can pray well and preach well.

One can find so many pains when the rain is falling.

Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.

I believe time wounds all heels.

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

Whatever I’m feeling, whatever I’m going through, whatever mood I’m in… If I’m feeling like dancing or clubbing, then it will be reflected in the music. If I’m feeling dark and vulnerable, then it will reflect in the music, too.

I’ve always written. There’s a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother’s papers were destroyed. I’d written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.

My justification is that most people my age spend a lot of time thinking about what they’re going to do for the next five or ten years. The time they spend thinking about their life, I just spend drinking.

We learn martial arts as helping weakness. You never fight for people to get hurt. You’re always helping people.

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.

People don’t usually compliment your character.

Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.

I always had faith in my creative capacity.

I understand aggressiveness in only one way: being prepared to hurt yourself, not someone else.

When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.

I am a big believer in education, because when I grew up in Austria – when I grew up in Austria I had a great education. I had great teachers.

I am my own sanctuary and I can be reborn as many times as I choose throughout my life.

To refrain from imitation is the best revenge.

I’m just like you – I want to be a good human being. I’m doing my best, and I’m working at it. And I’m trying to be a Christian. I’m always amazed when people walk up to me and say, ‚I’m a Christian.‘ I always think, ‚Already? You’ve already got it?‘ I’m working at it. And at my age, I’ll still be working at it at 96.

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.

Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart.

A lot of the problems I had with fame I was bringing on myself. A lot of self-loathing, a lot of woe-is-me. Now I’m learning to see the positive side of things, instead of, like, ‚I can’t go to Kmart. I can’t take my kids to the haunted house.‘

The real truths of life are never entirely new to you or to anybody because there is a level deep down within you where you already know all the things, all those spiritual truths that you read or hear, and then recognize them. I say ‚recognize‘ because you’re not… it’s not new.

By indignities men come to dignities.

I don’t think I will ever be content. I am somebody who is always hungry.

A career is born in public – talent in privacy.

‚Victory Lap,‘ even the title. It’s the accumulation of trial and error; that’s what I represent; trial and error.

Everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn our thoughts to God when everything is going well with us… While what we call ‚our own life‘ remains agreeable, we will not surrender it to Him. What, then, can God do in our interests but make ‚our own life‘ less agreeable to us, and take away the plausible sources of false happiness?

To be loved is very demoralizing.