When I was 11 I became very depressed. It had a lot to do with the climate and ecological crisis. I thought everything was just so wrong and nothing was happening and there’s no point in anything.

It makes no sense to worry about things you have no control over because there’s nothing you can do about them, and why worry about things you do control? The activity of worrying keeps you immobilized.

I think that once you fully understand the climate and ecological emergencies, then you know what you can do as well. And, of course, there’s a lot of things you can do in your everyday life, but we cannot be focusing on these individual things you can do. We have to see the full picture.

There’s a schizoid streak within the family anyway so I dare say that I’m affected by that. The majority of the people in my family have been in some kind of mental institution, as for my brother he doesn’t want to leave. He likes it very much.

There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad.

I’ve tried everything. I’ve done therapy, I’ve done colonics. I went to a psychic who had me running around town buying pieces of ribbon to fill the colors in my aura. Did the Prozac thing.

I’m addicted to placebos.

I am alone; I am always alone no matter what.

A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary.

Generally speaking, if a human being never shows anger, then I think something’s wrong. He’s not right in the brain.

My message is that if we do not care about the climate crisis and if we do not act now then almost no other question is going to matter in the future.

The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.

I was ready to quit music. It felt to me like music equalled death.

There are so many emotions that you’re feeling, you can get stifled by them if you’re feeling them all at once. What I try to do is take one moment – one simple, simple feeling – and expand it into three-and-a-half minutes.

A great hallmark of mental wellness is the ability to be in the present moment, fully and with no thoughts of being elsewhere.

Cycling is a joy and faster than many other modes of transport, depending on the time of day. It clears the head.

I think every entertainer’s had nights when things go wrong. I mean you can’t remember everything all the time, and especially if you’re having hard times personally, things going on that you – you know, and then people make it worse. And that makes you feel worse.

What I want for my fans and for the world, for anyone who feels pain, is to lean into that pain and embrace it as much as they can and begin the healing process.

By stopping flying, you don’t only reduce your own carbon footprint but also that sends a signal to other people around you that the climate crisis is a real thing and that helps push a political movement.

Worry – a God, invisible but omnipotent. It steals the bloom from the cheek and lightness from the pulse; it takes away the appetite, and turns the hair gray.

If I’d found out that Norman Mailer liked me. I’d have killed myself.

Whenever the speech is corrupted so is the mind.

As a human being, anger is a part of our mind. Irritation also part of our mind. But you can do – anger come, go. Never keep in your sort of – your inner world, then create a lot of suspicion, a lot of distrust, a lot of negative things, more worry.

Love is a serious mental disease.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

Well, there are some things that I just can’t get out of my head, and they start to annoy me after a while. Sometimes they’re of my own creation, as well – and they’re just as annoying. It’s not only other people’s ear worms that bug me, it’s my own, as well.

Ain’t nothing like a good cry.

Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.

In the grip of a neurological disorder, I am fast losing control of words even as my relationship with the world has been reduced to them.

We all get weary sometimes, and we tend to think that life is what makes us weary.

Idleness is the parent of psychology.

If I couldn’t laugh I just would go insane, If we couldn’t laugh we just would go insane, If we weren’t all crazy we would go insane.

I’m a super-duper over-analyzer. You mix that with self-doubt and pressure, and that’s never healthy.

Hearing voices no one else can hear isn’t a good sign, even in the wizarding world.

Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.

I think that’s why I put my energy into making music. That’s how I get my thoughts out, instead of being crazy all the time.

Every man who possibly can should force himself to a holiday of a full month in a year, whether he feels like taking it or not.

What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

I don’t like being alone.

For what Harley Street specialist has time to understand the body, let alone the mind or both in combination, when he is a slave to thirteen thousand a year?

Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.

I was awfully curious to find out why I didn’t go insane.

When you get into your car, shut the door and be there for just half a minute. Breathe, feel the energy inside your body, look around at the sky, the trees. The mind might tell you, ‚I don’t have time.‘ But that’s the mind talking to you. Even the busiest person has time for 30 seconds of space.

I’m terrified of therapy because I don’t want it to mess with my creativity.

I have a company, and I’ve got to think about that. I’m trying to do my best there, and that’s a much harder task. We recycle as much as possible, and we conserve. But I’ve always been one to save everything – I even walk up stairs on the very inside or the very outside to not wear out the tread.

By imposing too great a responsibility, or rather, all responsibility, on yourself, you crush yourself.

In Buddhism, we talk of meditation as an act of awakening, to be awake to the fact that the earth is in danger and living species are in danger.

Just do some kind of workout. Doesn’t matter if it’s going for a walk around the block, going for a jog, doing some calisthenics, lifting weights, going to a pool and swimming – you name it. But do something that gets your blood flowing and gets your mind in the game.

My mother was a professional sick person; she took a lot of pain pills. There are many people like that. It’s just how they are used to getting attention. I always remember she’s the daughter of alcoholics who’d leave her alone at Christmas time.

Why should I stop working? If I do, I’ll die and it’ll all be finished.

It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.

I feel like I want to take care of everyone and I also feel this terrible guilt if I am unable to. And I have felt this way ever since all this success started.

In California, they don’t throw their garbage away – they make it into TV shows.

Meditation is not following any system; it is not constant repetition and imitation. Meditation is not concentration.

Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, and its power of endurance – the cheerful man will do more in the same time, will do it; better, will preserve it longer, than the sad or sullen.

What a waste it is to lose one’s mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.

Writing makes you feel that there is a reason to go on living. If I couldn’t write, I would stop breathing.

Our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration and resentment.

Sadness is but a wall between two gardens.

When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money.