What comes out when life squeezes you? When someone hurts or offends you? If anger, pain and fear come out of you, it’s because that’s what’s inside.

Many people think of perfectionism as striving to be your best, but it is not about self-improvement; it’s about earning approval and acceptance.

I definitely connected to the fact that life gets out of control and you end up doing things and wishing you were doing other things instead.

You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.

Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.

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

In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

Usually, people have a tendency to be caught in the worries concerning the future or in the regret concerning the past. There is some kind of energy that is pushing them to run, and they are not able to establish themselves in the present moment.

My father wasn’t around when I was a kid, and I used to always say, ‚Why me? Why don’t I have a father? Why isn’t he around? Why did he leave my mother?‘ But as I got older I looked deeper and thought, ‚I don’t know what my father was going through, but if he was around all the time, would I be who I am today?‘

My whole life is a theater piece.

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one’s death, one dies one’s life.

When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

I can never say ‚why‘ about anything I do. I suppose I can say ‚how‘ and ‚when‘ and ‚what.‘ But ‚why‘ is impenetrable to me.

Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.

People like to build their own story about my life. I don’t know if it makes them feel better, or if it makes it okay for them to not like me, but the last thing I grew up as was rich.

There are some Christian people who taste and see and enjoy religion in their own souls, and who get at a deeper knowledge of it than books can ever give them, though they should search all their days.

Maybe other people will try to limit me but I don’t limit myself.

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

I think life is a matter of choices and that wherever we are, good or bad, is because of choices we make.

Do whatever you will, but first be such as are able to will.

People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.

I have practically no private life. I’m already used to this and ready for it. Yes, sometimes it is hard, but it is the choice I made.

I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

Man has two great spiritual needs. One is for forgiveness. The other is for goodness.

I grew up in an environment where being polite was taken as a weakness. So I just fought everybody.

To go beyond is as wrong as to fall short.

Great grief does not of itself put an end to itself.

Only God can look at somebody’s heart.

Can the mind see the truth of its own incapacity to know the unknown? Surely if I see very clearly that my mind cannot know the unknown, there is absolute quietness.

I never fall in love.

When making your choice in life, do not neglect to live.

I continuously go further and further learning about my own limitations, my body limitation, psychological limitations. It’s a way of life for me.

My goal was never to make Facebook cool. I am not a cool person.

I was lousy in school. Real screwed-up. A moron. I was antisocial and didn’t bother with the other kids. A really bad student. I didn’t have any brains. I didn’t know what I was doing there. That’s why I became an actor.

Who shall measure the hat and violence of the poet’s heart when caught and tangled in a woman’s body?

Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in our marching onward.

I believe things cannot make themselves impossible.

If anything is good for pounding humility into you permanently, it’s the restaurant business.

Being a full human being is difficult, frightening, and problematical.

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

An alcoholic is someone you don’t like who drinks as much as you do.

My only fault is that I don’t realize how great I really am.

I’ve always had a problem with the average macho man – they’ve always been a threat to me.

I am absolutely my own biggest critic.

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.

Sexuality is one of the ways that we become enlightened, actually, because it leads us to self-knowledge.

None of the records I make are ever a deliberate construction – they’re always an expression of who I am at the time and where I am in my life.

I cry so much less than I used to. I used to be one of the most teary people.

Indecision may or may not be my problem.

You can be obsessed with the bad things people say and the good things; either way, you’re obsessed with yourself, and I’m not – you can become unhinged so easily.

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.

Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.

Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone.

Let everyone try and find that as a result of daily prayer he adds something new to his life, something with which nothing can be compared.

This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say.

I am getting to the point where the only love worth being in is the love worth singing about.

Get mad, then get over it.

It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.

Freedom is not given to us by anyone; we have to cultivate it ourselves. It is a daily practice… No one can prevent you from being aware of each step you take or each breath in and breath out.

All through my writing life, I’ve had this impulse to write autobiographical works.