I don’t have people following me around, like bodyguards. I don’t know how people live like that. Maybe the young movie stars have to live like that, I don’t know. But it seems a little crazy to me. I don’t think you need all that stuff.

There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.

That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.

The bad fortune of the good turns their faces up to heaven; the good fortune of the bad bows their heads down to the earth.

In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t.

I was always very curious as a young man about why older writers who I met seemed so indifferent to what was going on, whereas I, in my 20s, was reading everything. Everything seemed important. But they were only interested in the writers they admired when they were young, and I didn’t understand it then, but now, now I understand it.

People only see what they are prepared to see.

You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes.

We have one planet in our solar system that’s habitable, and that’s the Earth, and space travel can transform things back here for the better. First of all, by just having people go to space and look back on this fragile planet we live on. People have come back transformed and have done fantastic things.

When someone is impatient and says, ‚I haven’t got all day,‘ I always wonder, How can that be? How can you not have all day?

The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong.

The time to worrying about flying is when you’re on the ground. When you’re up in the air, it’s too late. No point in worrying about it then.

I could sing you a thousand and one doo-wop songs. I love the simplicity in that music. It’s not super-poetic, it’s just from the heart.

I think it’s very important to cry in the shower and not in front of them. They need to know that everything’s going to be all right, even when you’re not sure it is.

We usually lose today, because there has been a yesterday, and tomorrow is coming.

There really is no difference between the bully and the victim.

See how many are better off than you are, but consider how many are worse.

When I was young, poverty was so common that we didn’t know it had a name.

We do not hate as long as we still attach a lesser value, but only when we attach an equal or a greater value.

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

We should not say that one man’s hour is worth another man’s hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at the most time’s carcass.

I grew up with the biologists. I know how they think.

There is always something infinitely mean about other people’s tragedies.

Being happy is a matter of personal taste.

On the Internet, you think everything is going to be public.

Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say ‚infinitely‘ when you mean ‚very‘; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

Good fame is like fire; when you have kindled you may easily preserve it; but if you extinguish it, you will not easily kindle it again.

If a man could have half of his wishes, he would double his troubles.

A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer’s hand.

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.

It’s not morbid to talk about death. Most people don’t worry about death, they worry about a bad death.

Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.

It’s a lot easier to stay idealistic if you don’t sign two to five next-of-kin letters every day.

It is better for you to be free of fear lying upon a pallet, than to have a golden couch and a rich table and be full of trouble.

On the other hand, you have different fingers.

Few people have the imagination for reality.

When I’m a director, I look at myself the actor as a completely different person. It’s somebody else up there, an actor playing a role. I keep myself out of it.

One who is too insistent on his own views, finds few to agree with him.

You’ve gotta understand that with branding and the way things are promoted, in our day and age, your older movie stars are not reachable or accessible because they’re not a part of the whole social media world.

We enjoy the process far more than the proceeds.

I think all documentaries leave out areas of people’s lives. Which is good. There are areas that need not be explored.

I’m astounded by people who want to ‚know‘ the universe when it’s hard enough to find your way around Chinatown.

In the course of history, men come to see that iron necessity is neither iron nor necessary.

When I was a kid, I loved Elvis, and Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones. But I had no connection to Hollywood – and being a movie star was such a far-fetched idea, growing up in Hawaii.

The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.

There’s always been a lot of information about your activities. Every phone number you dial, every credit-card charge you make. It’s long since passed that a typical person doesn’t leave footprints.

I resolved to stop accumulating and begin the infinitely more serious and difficult task of wise distribution.

Older people sit down and ask, ‚What is it?‘ but the boy asks, ‚What can I do with it?‘.

The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.

What’s the use of happiness? It can’t buy you money.

A tree’s a tree. How many more do you need to look at?

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

But O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes.

When I was 11, the whole world was closed to me. I just felt I was on the outside of the world.

The longer a man’s fame is likely to last, the longer it will be in coming.

I think the word rich is all relative.

I just hope people don’t get sick of us. I’m sick of us and I’m in Destiny’s Child.

Your joy comes from how you think, the choices that we make in life.