When you realize who you live for, and who’s important to please, a lot of people will actually start living. I am never going to get caught up in that. I’m gonna look back on my life and say that I enjoyed it – and I lived it for me.

I’m one of the world’s most self-conscious people. I really have to struggle.

When the whole world has their eyes on you, if you say something that doesn’t truly come from your spirit and your soul, or if you wear something that doesn’t come from your spirit and your soul, it’s an injustice to your position. And so, I’m really myself every single day and I do it because I know my fans would want me to.

By indignities men come to dignities.

Everything’s intentional. It’s just filling in the dots.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

There are hunters, and there are victims. By your discipline, cunning, obedience, and alertness, you will decide if you are a hunter or a victim.

Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong.

Live your life while you have it. Life is a splendid gift. There is nothing small in it. Far the greatest things grow by God’s law out of the smallest. But to live your life, you must discipline it.

I had the classic 40 meltdown. I did. It’s embarrassing. It was pretty funny. But then I recovered. To me, it was like a second adolescence. Hormonally, my body was changing, my mind was changing, and so my relationship to myself and the world around me came to this assault of finiteness.

It’s not an easy course. It’s not designed to be. We’re not here to get you in touch with your inner child.

Oh, I’ve always been very… Emotional. ‚Hypersensitive‘ is what they call it, I think.

There are two kinds of people in this world. ‚I‘ people and ‚we‘ people. I’ve always tried to be a ‚we‘ person.

Power does not change you, it unmasks you.

God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another.

I’m not intimidated by how people perceive me.

People gonna be they own individuals and have they own worlds and I can’t knock it.

A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.

What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.

When I look back on my life as a whole, it is impossible for me not to feel blessed.

While musical experts of the world focus on what choir members can do, I would like to focus on what choir members can be.

To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance.

You have to be someone.

The worst thing I can be is the same as everybody else. I hate that.

Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.

I would rather make my name than inherit it.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to trust your team. It’s a lesson I’ve had to relearn quite a few times.

I have great respect for the past. If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going. I have respect for the past, but I’m a person of the moment. I’m here, and I do my best to be completely centered at the place I’m at, then I go forward to the next place.

Some people are very good at being ‚stars‘ and it suits them. I’m grudging about it and I find it annoying.

I don’t mind people hating me, because it pushes me.

Meditation is a state of mind which looks at everything with complete attention, totally, not just parts of it. And no one can teach you how to be attentive. If any system teaches you how to be attentive, then you are attentive to the system, and that is not attention.

You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.

God has his plans and his reasons. Sometimes we are supposed to go through things so that we learn lessons.

I think it is the height of ignorance to believe that the sexual act is an independent function necessary like sleeping or eating. Seeing, therefore, that I did not desire more children, I began to strive after self-control. There was endless difficulty in the task.

We forge the chains we wear in life.

Whatever that means, however you got on that mountain, why not try to climb it? And do it in your own way.

It’s stasis that kills you off in the end, not ambition.

Why does your mind conform? Have you ever asked? Are you aware that you are conforming to a pattern? It doesn’t matter what that pattern is, whether you have established a pattern for yourself or it has been established for you.

Achievement brings its own anticlimax.

We must, all of us, learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise.

To do the same thing over and over again is not only boredom: it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do.

Key is never be afraid of being yourself. Never!

It never mattered to me that people in school didn’t think that country music was cool, and they made fun of me for it – though it did matter to me that I was not wearing the clothes that everybody was wearing at that moment. But at some point, I was just like, ‚I like wearing sundresses and cowboy boots.‘

What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.

See, when you drive home today, you’ve got a big windshield on the front of your car. And you’ve got a little bitty rearview mirror. And the reason the windshield is so large and the rearview mirror is so small is because what’s happened in your past is not near as important as what’s in your future.

The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.

The more successful I become, the more I need a man.

I’d rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.

I know who I am, I know what I can and can’t do. I know what I will and won’t do. I know what I’m capable of and I don’t agree to do things that I don’t think I can pull off.

Let’s embrace being not normal!

I think there is a sense of being forced at this time to look at America’s really large shadow and that’s not all that bad.

There are many sham diamonds in this life which pass for real, and vice versa.

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

The most important thing I can tell you about aging is this: If you really feel that you want to have an off-the-shoulder blouse and some big beads and thong sandals and a dirndl skirt and a magnolia in your hair, do it. Even if you’re wrinkled.

But even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.

All I can do is be me, whoever that is.

Let everyone try and find that as a result of daily prayer he adds something new to his life, something with which nothing can be compared.

An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.

I feel like when I try to fit in, it comes across as not genuine, and that is not good. I’d rather just do me and have people say, ‚Oh. That’s interesting,‘ than try to fit in.

For a long time, I thought I was ugly and disfigured. This made me shy and timid, and I often reacted to insults that were not intended.

I’m mortified to be on the stage, but then again, it’s the only place where I’m happy.