What I can say is that all my characters are searching for their souls, because they are my mirrors. I’m someone who is constantly trying to understand my place in the world, and literature is the best way that I found in order to see myself.

Can people who hunger so desperately for what other people have ever have enough?

I had to prove you could be a new kind of black man. I had to show the world.

A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.

It creeps me out sometimes to think of the person I was. I was a terrible person. I was mean to people.

I don’t need to be vindicated, and I don’t want attention.

I saw a picture of myself when I came out of the hospital. I didn’t recognize myself.

Who ever is out of patience is out of possession of their soul.

I’m not looking to freak people out – eating rodents or bugs. I don’t do that anymore.

Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.

We will be more successful in all our endeavors if we can let go of the habit of running all the time, and take little pauses to relax and re-center ourselves. And we’ll also have a lot more joy in living.

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

To some extent I liken slavery to death.

Perhaps I can say that I am a bit astute, that I can adapt to circumstances, but it is also true that I am a bit naive. Yes, but the best summary, the one that comes more from the inside and I feel most true is this: I am a sinner whom the Lord has looked upon.

I never knew a more presumptuous person than myself. The fact that I say that shows that what I say is true.

Everyone, no doubt, remains first and foremost a man of his own country and continues to draw from it his motive force.

Our Creator expects His children everywhere to educate themselves.

I think I am smart unless I am really, really in love, and then I am ridiculously stupid.

The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.

There was a while when I was feeling like, ‚Damn, if I’d just been born black, I would not have to go through all this‘.

Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.

The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m as famous for my wheelchair and disabilities as I am for my discoveries.

He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.

Life is like a wheel. Sooner or later, it always come around to where you started again.

Did you know there’s a difference between being busy and being fruitful? Did you ever stop to think that just being busy – running around in circles all day but not accomplishing anything – is the same as wasting your time? It’s frustrating to expend so much energy and time and not have any fruit from your effort!

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

I really have no interest in myself.

Whether I’m at the office, at home, or on the road, I always have a stack of books I’m looking forward to reading.

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

That’s the shock: All cliches are true. The years really do speed by. Life really is as short as they tell you it is. And there really is a God – so do I buy that one? If all the other cliches are true… Hell, don’t pose me that one.

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.

To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts and deep sympathy. With the benefit of historical hindsight we can all see things which we would wish had been done differently or not at all.

People are looking for something a little more stable; people are feeling like they need to get closer to God.

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?

I’m sure like everyone else I’m not always the happiest if I don’t do a good job in quali or the race or whatever, so I think beating myself up sometimes makes me work harder.

Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.

If you look at my life, generally, I’ve been put in situations which were difficult and which I conquered.

If I read a book that impresses me, I have to take myself firmly by the hand, before I mix with other people; otherwise they would think my mind rather queer.

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

Littera scripta manet – ‚The written word will remain‘. That’s true, but it won’t be that much comfort to me.

If I am no longer disturbed myself, I will deal less with disturbed people, but I don’t regret having concerned myself with them because I think most of us are disturbed.

Education must provide the opportunities for self-fulfillment; it can at best provide a rich and challenging environment for the individual to explore, in his own way.

Live the life you’ve dreamed.

Custom reconciles us to everything.

The wisest hustler can suddenly fall for the worst tramp and lose all of his money on her. The hustler is aware of his own weaknesses and openings to con. This awareness is his edge.

As I’m traveling around, I meet many small children. And when I look at a small and think how we’ve harmed this beautiful planet since I was that age, I feel a kind of desperation, anger, shame. I don’t know what I feel; I just don’t know what the emotion is.

In less than a hundred years, we have found a new way to think of ourselves. From sitting at the center of the universe, we now find ourselves orbiting an average-sized sun, which is just one of millions of stars in our own Milky Way galaxy.

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one’s key to the experience of others.

I sometimes ask people, ‚Can you be aware of your own presence? Not the thoughts that you’re having, not the emotions that you’re having, but the very presence of your very being?‘ You become aware of your own presence by sensing the entire energy field in your body that is alive. And that is the totality of your presence.

You’re going to die. You’re going to be dead. It could be 20 years, it could be tomorrow, anytime. So am I. I mean, we’re just going to be gone. The world’s going to go on without us. All right now. You do your job in the face of that, and how seriously you take yourself you decide for yourself.

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

Weak minds sink under prosperity as well as adversity; but strong and deep ones have two high tides.

Control your own destiny! Control your own destiny!

Sometimes, I think if you get away from what you’re called to do, it’s more of a distraction.

You’re just left with yourself all the time, whatever you do anyway. You’ve got to get down to your own God in your own temple. It’s all down to you, mate.

Suppose you could gain everything in the whole world, and lost your soul. Was it worth it?

I was raised in a family where vulnerability was barely tolerated: no training wheels on our bicycles, no goggles in the pool, just get it done. And so I grew up not only with discomfort about my own vulnerability, I didn’t care for it in other people either.

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.

Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.

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.