I go through a lot of depression, and I know other people do, too, but I have an outlet that so many people don’t. If you have that inside of you and can’t get it out, what do you do?

My mother never gave up one me. I messed up in school so much they were sending me home, but my mother sent me right back.

Our veterans who fall on hard times and find themselves without a home deserve more than just handwringing or kind words. They deserve real help that gets them back on their feet.

I know some people might think it odd – unworthy even – for me to have written a cookbook, but I make no apologies. The U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins thought I had demeaned myself by writing poetry for Hallmark Cards, but I am the people’s poet so I write for the people.

I have to write because if I don’t get something down then after a while I feel it’s going to bang the side of my head off.

The story with anorexic girls – nobody works with anorexic girls. That has nothing to do with fashion.

The best thing to hold onto in life is each other.

Despair is a narcotic. It lulls the mind into indifference.

Life’s too short to deal with other people’s insecurities.

If you keep on writing for three years, every day, you should be strong. Of course, you have to be strong mentally, also. But in the first place, you have to be strong physically. That is a very important thing. Physically and mentally you have to be strong.

I’m gonna make what I want to make, and other people are gonna like what they’re gonna like. It doesn’t really matter.

The Qataris have cut off support for the most extreme elements of terrorist organizations.

Paranoia is just another word for ignorance.

A person who can’t pay gets another person who can’t pay to guarantee that he can pay. Like a person with two wooden legs getting another person with two wooden legs to guarantee that he has got two natural legs. It don’t make either of them able to do a walking-match.

We humans have lost the wisdom of genuinely resting and relaxing. We worry too much. We don’t allow our bodies to heal, and we don’t allow our minds and hearts to heal.

After the 9/11 apocalypse happened in New York City, people, particularly New Yorkers, who breathed in the ash, or saw the results of that, have a tendency to keep seeing echoes and having flashbacks to it.

I write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don’t hurt me, because it is me. If it was not me, if I was pretending to be someone else, then this could unbalance my world, but I know who I am.

When younger writers and poets, musicians and painters are weakened by a stemming of funds, they come to me saddened, not as full of dreams and excitement and ideas. I am then weakened and diminished, and made less rich.

For what Harley Street specialist has time to understand the body, let alone the mind or both in combination, when he is a slave to thirteen thousand a year?

OVOXO will always be there.

When we are well, we all have good advice for those who are ill.

I never think of myself as an icon. What is in other people’s minds is not in my mind. I just do my thing.

We’re African-American and we work together as a family, so people assume we’re like the Jacksons. But I didn’t have parents using me to get out of a bad situation.

I don’t digest things with my mind.

One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

I want to thank God, obviously for the health, for the talent He’s given me, for my family who supports me, for the things that basketball’s taught me on and off the court. For the people that I’ve been able to meet through the game of basketball.

Art was, seriously, the only thing I’d ever wanted to own. It has always been for me a stable nourishment. I use it. It can change the way that I feel in the mornings.

When your soul is resting, your emotions are okay, your mind is okay, and your will is at peace with God, not resisting what He’s doing.

Writing makes you feel that there is a reason to go on living. If I couldn’t write, I would stop breathing.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

I live halfway between reality and theater at all times. And I was born this way.

‚Fame‘ exhausts me.

Meditation is difficult for many people because their thoughts are always on some distant object or place. One form of meditation is to label the thought as it appears and then choose to let it go.

There is nothing that wastes the body like worry, and one who has any faith in God should be ashamed to worry about anything whatsoever.

Protect your enthusiasm from the negativity of others.

I think Buddhism should open the door of psychology and healing to penetrate more easily into the Western world.

Where fear is, happiness is not.

The love we give away is the only love we keep.

There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

Since I was 16, I’ve felt a black cloud hangs over me. Since then, I have taken pills for depression.

All my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience. My work is always stronger when I get very selfish about it.

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.

I give thanks to God and to all the people in the U.K. who have supported me over the years.

Whenever you are angry, be assured that it is not only a present evil, but that you have increased a habit.

In a sense I portray myself in a very androgynous way, and I love androgyny.

The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain.

If you start to think of your physical and moral condition, you usually find that you are sick.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help… Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.

Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.

The components of anxiety, stress, fear, and anger do not exist independently of you in the world. They simply do not exist in the physical world, even though we talk about them as if they do.

Everybody has a creative potential and from the moment you can express this creative potential, you can start changing the world.

I’ve always had a problem with the average macho man – they’ve always been a threat to me.

It’s a representation of yourself, and you can express a lot of your creativity with what your wearing.

Women have always been the strong ones of the world. The men are always seeking from women a little pillow to put their heads down on. They are always longing for the mother who held them as infants.

I don’t know how to function without music. When I’m not making it, I’m listening to it. It gives me courage and takes care of my mind.

Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends.

For me, writing has always come out of living a fairly to-the-bone kind of life, just really being present to a lot of life. The writing has been really a byproduct of that.

I have always been that girl in the back who doesn’t say anything.

Vulnerability is about showing up and being seen. It’s tough to do that when we’re terrified about what people might see or think.

Everybody’s journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality.