When I was making the early stuff, I never expected it to be so big. I was in my own kind of bubble. I never wanted to tour; I just wanted to create music and make a diary I could put out into the world. And sometimes, I became the characters.

He who conquers others is strong; He who conquers himself is mighty.

Would that I were a dry well, and that the people tossed stones into me, for that would be easier than to be a spring of flowing water that the thirsty pass by, and from which they avoid drinking.

I used to let other people’s struggles affect my happiness. If they weren’t happy, there was no way I was going to be happy. The opposite was also true: If I wasn’t happy, I didn’t want anyone around me to be happy.

You can’t have it all, all at once. Who – man or woman – has it all, all at once? Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all. But in different periods of time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.

I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

Remembering what you’ve been through and how that has strengthened your mindset can lift you out of a negative brain loop and help you bypass those weak, one-second impulses to give in. Even if you’re feeling low and beat down by life right now, I guarantee you can think of a time or two when you overcame odds and tasted success.

A child wants things to be a certain way. When you get to be an adult, you just understand that some people are good, some are not, and you can’t be naive.

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy. My ultimate goal is to end up being happy. Most of the time.

‚Victory Lap,‘ even the title. It’s the accumulation of trial and error; that’s what I represent; trial and error.

I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.

Choose people who lift you up.

As much as it might look like, to someone else, that I’m successful, I never feel like I’m anywhere. The further I go, I still feel equally further from my eventual goal. Because as I grow, I get more goals. I’m never content.

The best part about being in your thirties is you know what works for you.

My main goal is to be a self-made man and have control over what’s mine.

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.

I am God’s vessel. But my greatest pain in life is that I will never be able to see myself perform live.

Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

Men must know their limitations.

Basically you have to suppress your own ambitions in order to be who you need to be.

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

The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.

Loving someone liberates the lover as well as the beloved. And that kind of love comes with age.

Precepts or maxims are of great weight; and a few useful ones on hand do more to produce a happy life than the volumes we can’t find.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.

When you have nothing important or interesting to say, don’t let anyone persuade you to say it.

Testing oneself is best when done alone.

The devil is a peace stealer, and he works hard to set us up to get upset. But we can learn how to change our approach so we don’t live upset all of the time. And Jesus gives us the best example to follow.

I think being able to age gracefully is a very important talent. It is too late for me.

When I did have some success, it further emboldens you to be like, ‚No, I’m just going to write what I feel I should write.‘

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

Like Frank Sinatra, I’m doing it my way.

Action is character.

Boys do cry, but I don’t think I shed a tear for a good chunk of my teenage years.

I have had fun being who I became, so to speak.

Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.

It’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction.

What I am looking for is not out there, it is in me.

The more I grow in popularity, the lonelier it gets. Because you don’t really know me. You just know this part of me. You fell in love with that. But it’s way more intricate than what meets the surface.

Follow your honest convictions and be strong.

I’m never going to be fast, and nobody will ever mistake me for being fast.

People make jokes about my bosoms, why don’t they look underneath the breasts at the heart? It’s obvious I’ve got big ones and if people want to assume they’re not mine, then let them.

Some writers sit down without a thought of what they are going to say, and they go through draft after draft.

Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.

You don’t look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you.

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

I’m not really good at fun-to-know, human interest stuff. We’re not ‚celebrities‘, whose life itself is a performance. Good or bad or ugly, we are our words. They’re what people meet.

The best measure of a man’s honesty isn’t his income tax return. It’s the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.

I think my vice would be outdoing myself.

To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it.

I’m kind of fascist with myself, you know.

I never went to school more than six months in my life, but I can say this: that among my earliest recollections, I remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not understand.

I’m selfish.

Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults.

The things that transfixed you as a child, that you found most exciting was not a passing fancy, but a message about what you’re supposed to do.

Your attitude towards failure determines your altitude after failure.

I used to stutter really badly. Everybody thinks it’s funny. And it’s not funny. It’s not.

It was weird to be married; you kind of lose your identity. You’re suddenly somebody’s wife. And you’re like, ‚Oh, I’m half of a couple now. I’ve lost me.‘

I began writing at the age of 5, but there was a dark period between the ages of 8 and 16 when I didn’t write. I started again at 16 and have no idea why, but it was suddenly the only thing I wanted to do.

Now, you lose something in your life, or you come into a conflict, and there’s gonna come a time that you’re gonna know: There was a reason for that. And at the end of your life, all the things you thought were periods, they turn out to be commas. There was never a full stop in any of it.