I think I have to trust that you end up with the person you’re supposed to end up with, and that everything in between is there to teach you stuff.

What do I care about the purring of one who cannot love, like the cat?

My weaknesses have always been food and men – in that order.

When I came into this industry, I was never afraid to be myself.

Difficulties are things that show a person what they are.

Alimony is like buying hay for a dead horse.

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.

It’s much worse to read criticism about your son than yourself.

My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.

It’s like, remember who you always were, where you came from, who your parents were, how they raised you. Because that authentic self is going to follow you all through life, so make sure that it’s solid so it’s something that you can hold on and be proud of for the rest of your life.

If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.

Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.

Couples are wholes and not wholes, what agrees disagrees, the concordant is discordant. From all things one and from one all things.

The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.

It’s better to be unhappy alone than unhappy with someone – so far.

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.

I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.

I’m just trying to be myself. I’m not trying to be anyone else.

Although I don’t have a prescription for what others should do, I know I have been very fortunate and feel a responsibility to give back to society in a very significant way.

Do not be very upright in your dealings for you would see by going to the forest that straight trees are cut down while crooked ones are left standing.

I write for myself things that I’ve gone through.

I was brought up to believe that the worst thing you could do was ‚call attention to yourself,‘ or ‚think you were smart.‘ My mother was an exception to this rule and was punished by the early onset of Parkinson’s disease.

The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.

Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

What we face may look insurmountable. But I learned something from all those years of training and competing. I learned something from all those sets and reps when I didn’t think I could lift another ounce of weight. What I learned is that we are always stronger than we know.

Those who know me know I’m passionate about lists, and top of my list of priorities is my family. My wife Joan and I do not consider our legacy to our children to be wealth or fame but the opportunity to pursue happiness by following their own path.

Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.

Every human being is under construction from conception to death.

Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite – inspire fear and insecurity.

My parents were dealing with evictions and repossessions and electricity getting shut off, and I just realized that I had to get it together.

No matter what your mission is, have some notion in your head. Forget the model, whether it’s government or nonprofit or profit. Ask yourself the more important question: Is my mission improving the world? Are you sure about it? Seek to disconfirm that all the time. And if you can, change your mission.

I can express myself.

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.

I felt I had to solve everyone’s problems.

No one can live without relationship. You may withdraw into the mountains, become a monk, a sannyasi, wander off into the desert by yourself, but you are related. You cannot escape from that absolute fact. You cannot exist in isolation.

Someone told me something that stuck with me: ‚You have to envision your life, and then go backwards.‘ I’ve been living by that motto for a while, so I see where I need to be. Now I’m just backtracking and trying to get back up there.

I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.

A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.

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.

I was born on a full moon. Both my children were born on full moons, too. Some people say that’s scary. It is what it is, man, I don’t be trippin‘. I couldn’t tell God when I wanted to be born.

I’ve always believed in God. I also think that’s the sort of thing that either comes as part of the equipment, the capacity to believe, or at some point in your life, when you’re in a position where you actually need help from a power greater than yourself, you simply make an agreement.

True friends stab you in the front.

Experience is the teacher of all things.

Get up tomorrow early in the morning, and earlier than you did today, and do the best that you can. Always stay near me, for tomorrow I will have much to do and more than I ever had, and tomorrow blood will leave my body above the breast.

Friends accept you the way you are.

All of us are mentors. You’re mentors right here and now. And one of the things I’ve always done throughout my life, I have always found that person, that group of people that I was going to reach my hand out and help bring them along with me.

Even with my divorce and with everything, I don’t need money.

One can love a child, perhaps, more deeply than one can love another adult, but it is rash to assume that the child feels any love in return.

I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms.

Friendship increases in visiting friends, but in visiting them seldom.

There are two ways of being happy: We must either diminish our wants or augment our means – either may do – the result is the same and it is for each man to decide for himself and to do that which happens to be easier.

Faith is about trusting God when you have unanswered questions.

Sometimes if you got a problem deep rooted in your life, it takes a little bit of time to overcome it in that area.

Avoid popularity if you would have peace.

There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.

There are slavish souls who carry their appreciation for favors done them so far that they strangle themselves with the rope of gratitude.

Testing oneself is best when done alone.

There should be a point to movies. Sure, you’re giving people a diversion from the cold world for a bit, but at the same time, you pass on some facts and rules and maybe a little bit of wisdom.

We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay – and rise!

A man should never neglect his family for business.