You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him.

Basketball is my passion, I love it. But my family and friends mean everything to me. That’s what’s important. I need my phone so I can keep in contact with them at all times.

I never desired to please the rabble. What pleased them, I did not learn; and what I knew was far removed from their understanding.

I want to look my best for God. So many people have the attitude that if you’re a Christian you’ve got to dress bad, wear an old color, not do anything to your hair, have nothing. It’s no wonder that Christianity is not very attractive. I mean, how many people do you know in a Western culture that’s going to go, ‚Yeah, give me some of that?‘

I can honestly say, after talking about my mom passing away, I got the biggest weight off of my chest. Comedy is my therapy. That’s how I deal with my problems, my personal battles. I talk about it. I give it to my fans. When they laugh at it, it’s a release, for lack of a better word.

I do love email. Wherever possible I try to communicate asynchronously. I’m really good at email.

An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.

Never ask anyone over 70 how they feel. They’ll tell you.

I guess maybe when you get past 70, other people start asking you how you feel.

I write all my sermons.

If I love you, what business is it of yours?

Allow children to be happy in their own way, for what better way will they find?

My body is quite tiny, but a lot of the emotions I feel are pretty explosive. They have to come out.

An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.

There is an optical illusion about every person we meet.

There are some people who need to wear a label round their necks to show that they are Christians at all, or else we might mistake them for sinners, their actions are so like those of the ungodly.

If you want what you’re saying heard, then take your time and say it so that the listener will actually hear it. You might save somebody’s life. Your own, first.

I don’t see myself as ever being like anybody else.

There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn’t look at all like the way you said it before. I don’t know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature.

Wisdom stands at the turn in the road and calls upon us publicly, but we consider it false and despise its adherents.

If you’re performing music that is not who you are or where you’re at, it is painful. It’s painful for the performer and for the audience.

If I could write directly on a typewriter or a computer, I would do it. But keyboards have always intimidated me. I’ve never been able to think clearly with my fingers in that position. A pen is a much more primitive instrument. You feel that the words are coming out of your body and then you dig the words into the page.

And all who told it added something new, and all who heard it, made enlargements too.

Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t implement promises, but keep them.

If I have the chance to say something, I will say it – but that doesn’t obligate me to always say something, or to shed light on every problem, as if I were a lawmaker.

It’s true that obscenity is a matter of taste and in the eye of the beholder.

To find out your real opinion of someone, judge the impression you have when you first see a letter from them.

Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it. Beyond the pairs of opposites of which the world consists, other, new insights begin.

Journalism largely consists of saying ‚Lord Jones is Dead‘ to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.

I don’t see myself as beautiful, because I can see a lot of flaws. People have really odd opinions. They tell me I’m skinny, as if that’s supposed to make me happy.

If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.

Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them.

I confused things with their names: that is belief.

The expression a woman wears on her face is far more important than the clothes she wears on her back.

Words may show a man’s wit but actions his meaning.

I look out at the stadiums full of people and see them all knowing the words to songs I wrote. And curling their hair! I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It’s just funny. And wonderful.

A true artist is expected to be all that is noble-minded, and this is not altogether a mistake; on the other hand, however, in what a mean way are critics allowed to pounce upon us.

I’ll be judged on the body of work and not the popularity of any one decision.

We have language and they do not. Chimps communicate by embracing, patting, looking – all these things. And they have lots of sounds. But they cannot sit and discuss. They cannot teach about things that are not present, as far as we know.

We do not see people as they are, but as they appear to us. And these appearances are usually misleading.

Many people find the universe confusing – it’s not.

It is very hard to not be able to engage with people in a real and honest way because they either want something from me, or they see me as something that I simply am not.

The people in my songs are all me.

My aim is to make the poor look rich and the rich look poor.

It’s very hard to find your own words – and you don’t actually exist until you have your own words.

I’m a writer, and I will write what I want to write.

I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate.

The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

I always try to be myself. Ever since I was an introverted kid, I’d get on stage and be able to break out of my shell.

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it.

I am who I am. That’s why my friends and peers respect and appreciate me. I don’t change or cater my actions to fit my surroundings. I’m myself 24/7. People appreciate that.

Communications technology changes possibilities for communication, but that doesn’t mean it changes the inherited structure of the brain. So you may think that you’re addicted to online reading, but as soon as it isn’t available anymore, your brain will pretty immediately adjust to other forms of reading. It’s a habit like all habits.

We tend to mistake music for the physical object.

Self-knowledge comes from knowing other men.

I love being a woman and I was not one of these women who rose through professional life by wearing men’s clothes or looking masculine. I loved wearing bright colors and being who I am.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed.

It seems to me that terrestrial beings, as they become more autonomous, psychologically richer, shut themselves up in a way against one another, and at the same time gradually become strangers to the cosmic environment and currents, impenetrable to one another, and incapable of exteriorizing themselves.