What it’s like to be me? You know, it’s good to be me. My life is good.

Because forgiveness is like this: a room can be dank because you have closed the windows, you’ve closed the curtains. But the sun is shining outside, and the air is fresh outside. In order to get that fresh air, you have to get up and open the window and draw the curtains apart.

Many people in this world are still so identified with every thought that arises in their head. There is not the slightest space of awareness there.

Observe all men, thyself most.

What the heck is true love? I remember feeling, back when I was 12 and ‚going‘ with this girl, ‚Is this true love?‘

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

If you have the opportunity to play this game of life you need to appreciate every moment. A lot of people don’t appreciate the moment until it’s passed.

The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.

Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself. But mankind wasn’t always so lucky. Less than a century ago, men and women did not have easy access to the puzzle boxes within them.

He is lost who is possessed by carnal desire.

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.

Modesty is a learned affectation. And as soon as life slams the modest person against the wall, that modesty drops.

There are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, ‚That person I see is a savage monster;‘ instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do.

The way I approach this thing, when I started to get my head screwed on straight and really trying to make something of myself as an artist, when I was 19 or 20, it became more about function for me. Like, what is this song doing to you? What is the function of this type of artform? What is it doing?

There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect.

These things bring you to reality as to how fragile you are; at the same moment you are doing something that nobody else is able to do. The same moment that you are seen as the best, the fastest and somebody that cannot be touched, you are enormously fragile.

One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer.

As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world – that is the myth of the atomic age – as in being able to remake ourselves.

So let’s be honest with ourselves and not take ourselves too serious, and never condemn the other fellow for doing what we are doing every day, only in a different way.

Then suddenly something just kicked me. I kind of woke up and realised that I was in a different atmosphere than you normally are. My immediate reaction was to back off, slow down.

I hear my friends and my mom tell me I’m special, but honestly, I still don’t get it.

Serious illness doesn’t bother me for long because I am too inhospitable a host.

The older I get, the better I understand that every day is a gift.

You’re always learning. The problem is, sometimes you stop and think you understand the world. This is not correct. The world is always moving. You never reach the point you can stop making an effort.

There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November.

Never complain. Never explain.

When I think over what I have said, I envy dumb people.

Humility is to make a right estimate of one’s self.

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?

All wrong-doing arises because of mind. If mind is transformed can wrong-doing remain?

Upon the creatures we have made, we are, ourselves, at last, dependent.

I hope that tomorrow we can all, wherever we are, join in expressing our grief at Diana’s loss, and gratitude for her all-too-short life. It is a chance to show to the whole world the British nation united in grief and respect.

Humanity, you never had it to begin with.

In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride.

If you have passion, there is no need for excuses because your enthusiasm will trump any negative reasoning you might come up with. Enthusiasm makes excuses a nonissue.

Whoever despises himself nonetheless respects himself as one who despises.

Why was I born with such contemporaries?

I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better. I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.

As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.

The saddest thing I can imagine is to get used to luxury.

If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.

I’m one of the luckiest people on earth.

I’m 31 now. I think I’m beginning to understand what life is, what romance is, and what a relationship means.

If you’ve lost your spirit, even living in the richest country in the world can’t help you become rich.

I love my friends and my past, and it’s made me who I am.

None but ourselves can free our minds.

I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.

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

In the stillness of your presence, you can feel your own formless and timeless reality as the unmanifested life that animates your physical form. You can then feel the same life deep within every other human and every other creature. You look beyond the veil of form and separation. This is the realization of oneness. This is love.

Everything I have, my career, my success, my family, I owe to America.

Libraries raised me.

What starts the process, really, are laughs and slights and snubs when you are a kid. If your anger is deep enough and strong enough, you learn that you can change those attitudes by excellence, personal gut performance.

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.

Just because something didn’t work out your way, or somebody disappointed you, that does not change who you are.

I don’t look at my old work. I mean, they made nice books; the books were made without me, the one from last year and the one from this year. I – personally, I’m not interested in my own past. I’m only interested in today – perhaps tomorrow.

The older I get, the more important the eternal becomes to me personally.

I guess I have always been deeply terrified to really be someone’s wife since I know from life one cannot love another, ever, really.

As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.

Timidity makes a person modest. It makes him or her say, ‚I’m not worthy of being written up in the record of deeds in heaven or on earth.‘ Timidity keeps people from their good. They are afraid to say, ‚Yes, I deserve it.‘

You have to take risks. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.

Feeling sorry for ourselves is the most useless waste of energy on the planet. It does absolutely no good. We can’t let our circumstances or what others do or don’t do control us. We can decide to be happy regardless.