When I was in my teens I had issues with OCD.

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.

I’m not a big fan of psychoanalysis: I think if you have mental problems what you need are good pills. But I do think that if you have thinks that bother you, things that are unresolved, the more that you talk about them, write about them, the less serious they become.

I’m the only person of distinction who has ever had a depression named for him.

Kites rise highest against the wind – not with it.

I grew up in New Orleans. I had just moved into my dorm at the University of New Orleans, and I was doing laundry, and my mom called me, like, ‚We’ve got to evacuate. There’s a hurricane’s coming.‘

You should never view your challenges as a disadvantage. Instead, it’s important for you to understand that your experience facing and overcoming adversity is actually one of your biggest advantages.

Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.

The truth is that there is no actual stress or anxiety in the world; it’s your thoughts that create these false beliefs. You can’t package stress, touch it, or see it. There are only people engaged in stressful thinking.

We are dying from overthinking. We are slowly killing ourselves by thinking about everything. Think. Think. Think. You can never trust the human mind anyway. It’s a death trap.

Worry and reasoning are two of Satan’s most successful tools. He’ll get us started with one negative thought and then sit back and watch us finish ourselves off.

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.

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

In fact, you couldn’t give me anything to make me go back to being a teenager. Never. No, I hated it.

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

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

Intelligent people should learn from their experiences. With people on the street, the bad experience has beaten them.

But for my faith in God, I should have been a raving maniac.

That we are not much sicker and much madder than we are is due exclusively to that most blessed and blessing of all natural graces, sleep.

Total relaxation is the secret to enjoying sitting meditation. I sit with my spine upright, but not rigid; and I relax all the muscles in my body.

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

I’ve had everything pierced at some point.

Since everything is in our heads, we had better not lose them.

To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it!

People won’t have time for you if you are always angry or complaining.

I can’t stress to you enough how much I can relate to teens being cyberbullied. Something that helps me is looking at old videos of me and my friends from middle school, or videos of my family. I love watching funny videos of my favorite people – it really cheers me up.

In a disordered mind, as in a disordered body, soundness of health is impossible.

If you tell me there’s something I can’t do, I’ll want to do it even more. Especially when it comes to entertaining.

When I was fourteen and first started going out, I always wanted to be the opposite of everyone else. So I would go to the club in a polo T-shirt and pants and sneakers and a hat on backward, just so I would not be dressed like other girls.

If I panic, everyone else panics.

When your soul is resting, your emotions are okay, your mind is okay, and your will is at peace with God, not resisting what He’s doing.

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

A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.

I just think it’s so important not to take yourself too seriously.

Women in particular need to keep an eye on their physical and mental health, because if we’re scurrying to and from appointments and errands, we don’t have a lot of time to take care of ourselves. We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own ‚to do‘ list.

The best cure for the body is a quiet mind.

What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?

Proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them.

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

For me, there have been times when an action movie, even a ‚Tomb Raider,‘ has helped me get out of myself and be physical again. It’s like therapy.

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.

If you keep on writing for three years, every day, you should be strong. Of course, you have to be strong mentally, also. But in the first place, you have to be strong physically. That is a very important thing. Physically and mentally you have to be strong.

I don’t like being alone.

A lot of preachers‘ kids are some of the most rebellious kids in the world. I never was like that.

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

I grew up where, when a door closed, a window didn’t open. The only thing I had was cracks. I’d do everything to get through those cracks – scratch, claw, bite, push, bleed. Now the opportunity is here. The door is wide open, and it’s as big as a garage.

Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you’re a human being, you feel, you suffer. You’re gay, you’re sick, you’re nervous or whatever.

Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not ‚yours,‘ not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is you.

People say you have to hit rock bottom, and, I can tell you, almost dying is as rock bottom as it gets.

If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.

To live is to think.

I wake up in the morning and my mind starts making sentences, and I have to get rid of them fast – talk them or write them down.

Hatred is settled anger.

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

I think I hate cynicism more than anything else. It’s the curse of our age, and I want to avoid it at all costs.

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

I had slumps that lasted into the winter.

We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learnt to bear its ills without being overcome by them.

The pressure of adversity does not affect the mind of the brave man… It is more powerful than external circumstances.

With ideas it is like with dizzy heights you climb: At first they cause you discomfort and you are anxious to get down, distrustful of your own powers; but soon the remoteness of the turmoil of life and the inspiring influence of the altitude calm your blood; your step gets firm and sure and you begin to look – for dizzier heights.

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.