When I was 11, the whole world was closed to me. I just felt I was on the outside of the world.

I talk to myself all the time. Just make sure you answer.

This isn’t life in the fast lane, it’s life in the oncoming traffic.

I had a really good childhood up until I was nine, then a classic case of divorce really affected me.

I think, when you are growing up, you have to pull apart from what your mother wants or needs. You’ve got to go your own way, and that’s what I did.

If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.

Man never thinks himself happy, but when he enjoys those things which others want or desire.

Life, an age to the miserable, and a moment to the happy.

Unbeing dead isn’t being alive.

Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.

We enjoy the process far more than the proceeds.

I never admire another’s fortune so much that I became dissatisfied with my own.

Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.

It’s not morbid to talk about death. Most people don’t worry about death, they worry about a bad death.

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers names.

Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack.

I had the most magical childhood, running free and going anywhere I wanted to in my head.

People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.

There are various eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes: and as a result there are various truths, and as a result there is no truth.

I tend to overthink things. I’m not the guy who screams ‚This is a world smash!‘ when I finish a song.

Here’s something that’s contrary to popular belief: I actually don’t like thinking. I think people think I like to think a lot. And I don’t. I do not like to think at all.

Night brings our troubles to the light, rather than banishes them.

The frontier between hell and heaven is only the difference between two ways of looking at things.

What’s real freedom? Real freedom is being able to not have my way and still be just as happy as if I did.

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.

Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is impossible to foresee this, it is impossible to be warned.

I would be stupid not to be on my own side. But I’m a human being, too. And I’m on the side of human beings, rather than on the side of crocodiles.

And I saw the sax line-up that he had behind him and I thought, I’m going to learn the saxophone. When I grow up, I’m going to play in his band. So I sort of persuaded my dad to get me a kind of a plastic saxophone on the hire purchase plan.

Good men by nature, wish to know. I know that many will call this useless work… men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of that of wisdom, which is the food and only true riches of the mind.

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us.

I believe everyone should have a broad picture of how the universe operates and our place in it. It is a basic human desire. And it also puts our worries in perspective.

When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.

The infinitely little have a pride infinitely great.

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.

Everybody is idealistic when you’re a kid.

I actually don’t want a throne at all, because I don’t view myself as a queen; I view myself as one of my fans.

Seeing is not always believing.

The lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master.

The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.

It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.

Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.

It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world, whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always, she had to admit, interesting.

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.

My parents were divorced by the time I was even conscious – like, I don’t remember them ever being together.

There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.

We are wiser than we know.

Life would pall if it were all sugar; salt is bitter if taken by itself; but when tasted as part of the dish, it savours the meat. Difficulties are the salt of life.

If a man or woman is born ten years sooner or later, their whole aspect and performance shall be different.

Only the shallow know themselves.

The two things in the world we all share in this world are laughter and pain. We’ve all got problems. The levels of those problems vary, but we’ve all got problems. When you can take things that are painful and make them funny, that’s a gift – to you and your audience.

We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.

We view things not only from different sides, but with different eyes; we have no wish to find them alike.

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

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

From my childhood I had been intended for the clergy. This prospect hung like a dark cloud on my mind.

Being a kid’s not easy. You’re transforming and becoming a human being. At some point, you have everyone taking care of you, and then, all of a sudden, you’re out in the world.

When I was little… I didn’t relate to princesses. I saw Maleficent, and I just thought she was so – she was so elegant.

How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean.