I’ve watched a lot of people who became famous who completely change and I think it’s because they tend to believe all the hype that’s out there. I don’t think there’s that much hype about me.

I am trying to find myself. Sometimes that’s not easy.

Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things.

If you listen through the screen of your desires, then you obviously listen to your own voice; you are listening to your own desires.

If something can corrupt you, you’re corrupted already.

First and foremost, we need to be the adults we want our children to be. We should watch our own gossiping and anger. We should model the kindness we want to see.

I know I do not exaggerate, unconsciously and unintentionally, the scantiness of my resources and the difficulty of my life… I know that, but for the mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was taken of me, a little robber or a vagabond.

I said I was ‚The Greatest,‘ I never said I was the smartest!

You can live your life angry, bitter, mad at somebody or even guilty, not letting go of your own mistakes, but you won’t receive the good things God has in store.

All great change in America begins at the dinner table.

Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is impossible to foresee this, it is impossible to be warned.

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

Absolutely not. I have no problem with commitment. In fact, I love having someone in my life.

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.

I sometimes have a tendency to walk on the dark side.

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.

Knowledge cultivates your seeds and does not sow in your seeds.

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.

When you work as a humanitarian, you are conscious that politics have to be considered. Because if you really want to make an extreme change, then you have a responsibility.

I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart.

We have to do more than just elect a new President if we truly want to change this country.

Reversing your treatment of the man you have wronged is better than asking his forgiveness.

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

If I feel anxious every time someone is staring at me, well, I can’t control what they stare at, but my reaction is, I’m just not going to go outside the house. I’m going to stay in and chill. And when I do go out, I understand what comes along with that.

Before finding music, I didn’t have too many aspirations. I wanted to hang out, make a little money from whatever I had to do.

Deficiency motivation doesn’t work. It will lead to a life-long pursuit of try to fix me. Learn to appreciate what you have and where and who you are.

I use a stream-of-consciousness approach; if you don’t censor yourself, you end up with what you’re most concerned about, but you haven’t filtered it through your conscious mind. Then you craft it.

If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.

I just really believe people have to get hungry. I think maybe what we need to do, instead of trying to stuff our beliefs down people’s throats, is just pray for them to really be hungry and to see their neediness.

The fact is I am not having sex. But I feel absolutely ripe for the, what would you say? plucking?

The things that transfixed you as a child, that you found most exciting was not a passing fancy, but a message about what you’re supposed to do.

I have an expression I use as I’ve gone around the world through my career: ‚You never tell another man or woman what’s in their interest. They know their interest better than you know their interest.‘

The final proof of greatness lies in being able to endure criticism without resentment.

Each part of my life provided respite from the other and gave me a sense of proportion that classmates trained only on law studies lacked.

My future is righteousness.

To do the same thing over and over again is not only boredom: it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do.

I’m half living my life between reality and fantasy at all times.

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.

I just wanted to write something about running, but I realized that to write about my running is to write about my writing. It’s a parallel thing in me.

It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.

However happy people say they are, nobody is satisfied: we always have to be with the prettiest woman, buy a bigger house, change cars, desire what we do not have.

We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being.

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.

If we don’t plant the right things, we will reap the wrong things. It goes without saying. And you don’t have to be, you know, a brilliant biochemist and you don’t have to have an IQ of 150. Just common sense tells you to be kind, ninny, fool. Be kind.

I’ve had a few semi-toxic relationships, but it’s not what I look for when I’m seeing someone.

I’m a genetic optimist.

I was becoming post-ideological.

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

One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.

As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.

We are in a far better position to observe instincts in animals or in primitives than in ourselves. This is due to the fact that we have grown accustomed to scrutinizing our own actions and to seeking rational explanations for them.

College isn’t in everyone’s hearts. I am living proof, though, that school doesn’t mess up your plans. It gives you more experiences to write about.

It’s the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards.

You simply have to accept that your demons are a part of you.

Men take only their needs into consideration – never their abilities.

I don’t look at my old work. I mean, they made nice books; the books were made without me, the one from last year and the one from this year. I – personally, I’m not interested in my own past. I’m only interested in today – perhaps tomorrow.

Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.

All things are only transitory.

You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.

We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.

I like to make people feel happy and superior in their reaction towards my appearance.