I am getting to the point where the only love worth being in is the love worth singing about.

The strongest influences in my life and my work are always whomever I love. Whomever I love and am with most of the time, or whomever I remember most vividly. I think that’s true of everyone, don’t you?

My wife doesn’t even want to spend 2 hours with me.

The way to know life is to love many things.

My love is a hummingbird sitting that quiet moment on the bough, as the same cat crouches.

If it’s all instruction, you get annoyed with it and bored, and you stop reading. If it’s all entertainment, you read it quite quickly, your heart going pitty-pat, pitty-pat. But when you finish, that’s it. You’re not going to think about it much afterward, apart from the odd nightmare. You’re not going to read that book again.

This isn’t life in the fast lane, it’s life in the oncoming traffic.

Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.

Everything negative – pressure, challenges – is all an opportunity for me to rise.

Avoid popularity if you would have peace.

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

You don’t have to be like everybody else or do things like everybody else. God created you to be a unique individual, and He wants you to be free to be who He made you to be.

For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.

All you need is love.

I like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing. Muscles better and nerves more.

I never thought I would be such a family-oriented guy; I didn’t think that was part of my makeup. But somebody said that as you get older, you become the person you always should have been, and I feel that’s happening to me.

I’ve just tried to grow up in the most natural and gradual process that I possibly can and make choices I feel are right for me and my fans.

We love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving.

Never take anything for granted.

Remember, always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember, others may hate you. But those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.

Grief can take care if itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.

Human beings must be known to be loved; but Divine beings must be loved to be known.

He that overvalues himself will undervalue others, and he that undervalues others will oppress them.

So many people live with anger and unforgiveness, and many of them are Christians.

Sure, I can get a little bit jealous. The good part about jealousy is that it comes from passion. It’s also the dangerous part and it’s an ugly emotion that hurts.

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.

As a single withered tree, if set aflame, causes a whole forest to burn, so does a rascal son destroy a whole family.

Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.

Friends are thieves of time.

Meaning and reality were not hidden somewhere behind things, they were in them, in all of them.

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

I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.

Sometimes, you might meet somebody that you love that’s turning into a ‚they.‘ My key is invite them to Miami and take them to the ocean and let them jump off the boat in the ocean, on the sand bar, and cleanse off and pray and then go take a shower, and hopefully the ‚they‘ is out of you.

When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad ones you did do well, that’s Memoirs.

My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or blessed, believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success.

We have lived long enough to experience the hollowness of earth and the rottenness of all carnal promises.

At the end of the day, we started playing football because we loved it.

I’m an introvert somewhat. There could be a room full of people, I’ll go stand in the corner.

How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

No one is laughable who laughs at himself.

There’s something which impels us to show our inner souls. The more courageous we are, the more we succeed in explaining what we know.

He who learns but does not think, is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.

The lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master.

It’s true my father abused me and didn’t love and protect me the way he should have, and at times it seemed no one would ever help me and it would never end. But God always had a plan for my life, and He has redeemed me.

When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.

Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?

He who knows himself is enlightened.

When I worked on a magazine, I learned that there are many, many writers writing that can’t write at all; and they keep on writing all the cliches and bromides and 1890 plots, and poems about Spring and poems about Love, and poems they think are modern because they are done in slang or staccato style, or written with all the ‚i’s‘ small.

My life has been very full.

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.

The best thing about being a dad? Well, I think it’s just the thing that every man wants – to have a son and heir.

I still learn, but I think it’s the best thing in life to have a kid.

If you’re serious, you really understand that it’s important that you laugh as much as possible and admit that you’re the funniest person you ever met. You have to laugh. Admit that you’re funny. Otherwise, you die in solemnity.

We become what we repeatedly do.

He who is overly attached to his family members experiences fear and sorrow, for the root of all grief is attachment. Thus one should discard attachment to be happy.

Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.

I’m still living at least five parallel lives, honestly! I wonder about it. I have no idea how that happens.

I don’t think I’m such an amazing person who needs to be written about.

Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.

What gift has providence bestowed on man that is so dear to him as his children?

Love is trembling happiness.