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

Don’t talk about what you have done or what you are going to do.

I think I could go away tomorrow. I’ve already accomplished something. It’s such a selfish business that sometimes I get sick of myself.

For me, the essence of the great American Dream is spiritual. I believe that our Constitution is inspired and that it is based on principles that are timeless and universal. This is the reason why 95% of all written constitutions throughout the world are modeled after our Constitution.

Every seven years, I sit down and make a whole new plan.

Even with all the advantages of retrospect, and a lot of witnesses dead and gone, you can’t make your life look as if you intended it or you were consistent. All you can show is how you dealt with various hands.

Here’s the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don’t find it anywhere else.

Saints need sinners.

The time when most of you should withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd.

I don’t like it when people who are young act like they’re 40. That’s taking too much on. Putting up a shield and trying to act like you’re so mature or whatever – I don’t try to act mature. Some people might say I’m mature for my age, but it’s not something I’m trying to do, you know? I’m just me.

All wrong-doing arises because of mind. If mind is transformed can wrong-doing remain?

You may think it was a very little thing, and in these days it seems to me like a trifle, but it was a most important incident in my life. I could scarcely credit that I, the poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day; that by honest work, I had earned a dollar. I was a more hopeful and thoughtful boy from that time.

God doesn’t do things halfway. He goes all out! When God does something, it’s not just barely enough, mediocre or lukewarm.

Things do not always happen the way I would like them to happen, and I had better get used to that.

The fact that you are willing to say, ‚I do not understand, and it is fine,‘ is the greatest understanding you could exhibit.

I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man’s being unable to sit still in a room.

I had wanted a tape recorder since I was tiny. I thought it was a magic thing. I never got one until just before I went to art school.

Humans are amphibians – half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.

Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.

People always say when they meet me that I’m not what they expect. I assume they think I’m this super dark and depressing guy, but I like to channel all of those emotions into my work.

I worked with someone who told me they’d never like me. But for some reason, I just felt like I needed her approval. So I started changing myself to please her. It made me stop being social and friendly. I was so unhappy.

A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.

I used to have a real problem with self-pity. Every time the devil would throw a pity party, I would attend.

Small amounts of philosophy lead to atheism, but larger amounts bring us back to God.

When you love and accept yourself, when you know who really cares about you, and when you learn from your mistakes, then you stop caring about what people who don’t know you think.

The greatest day in your life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That’s the day we truly grow up.

Avoid popularity if you would have peace.

Accept everything about yourself – I mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the end – no apologies, no regrets.

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 was asked to act when I couldn’t act. I was asked to sing ‚Funny Face‘ when I couldn’t sing, and dance with Fred Astaire when I couldn’t dance – and do all kinds of things I wasn’t prepared for. Then I tried like mad to cope with it.

Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.

Thought can be so seductive and hypnotic that it absorbs your attention totally, so you become your thoughts.

To some extent I happily don’t know what I’m doing. I feel that it’s an artist’s responsibility to trust that.

Part of me suspects that I’m a loser, and the other part of me thinks I’m God Almighty.

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

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

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.

You may make some mistakes – but that doesn’t make you a sinner. You’ve got the very nature of God on the inside of you.

I feel the emotion that life conjures up and the songs I write get me closer to my feelings and realising who I am. It’s a natural process.

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

I deeply regret any harm, or any perceived harm, that I may have done to anyone by any behaviour of mine.

The older you get, the better you get.

A person will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part of his body – the wishbone.

What it’s like to be me? You know, it’s good to be me. My life is good.

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy.

If there is only one thing in my life that I am proud of, it’s that I’ve never been a kept woman.

All of my misfortunes come from having thought too well of my fellows.

I’m just like you – I want to be a good human being. I’m doing my best, and I’m working at it. And I’m trying to be a Christian. I’m always amazed when people walk up to me and say, ‚I’m a Christian.‘ I always think, ‚Already? You’ve already got it?‘ I’m working at it. And at my age, I’ll still be working at it at 96.

Let each know that for each the body, the mind and the soul have been freed to fulfill themselves.

Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.

But by reading them again and again finally I was able to grasp the essential part. What emotion, enthusiasm, enlightenment and confidence they communicated to me! I wept for joy.

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me.

We should purify our innate well of contentment – what a wonderful expression – and then external things will be in harmony with us.

All of us should be on guard against beliefs that flatter ourselves. At the very least, we should check such beliefs against facts.

To me, a leader is someone who holds her- or himself accountable for finding potential in people and processes. And so what I think is really important is sustainability.

Prejudice is a chain, it can hold you. If you prejudice, you can’t move, you keep prejudice for years. Never get nowhere with that.

I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized, and I still had a daughter who I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

Many people, especially young people, would like to be more independent and on their own. But it is very difficult and they suffer from feelings of isolation. I think that is one reason why young readers support my work.

Achievement brings its own anticlimax.

I look forward to death with great anticipation, to meeting God face to face.

The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.