We grow older, but we do not change. We become more sophisticated, but at bottom we continue to resemble our young selves, eager to listen to the next story and the next, and the next.

Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.

The reason I became 297 pounds is because that was comfortable. What was very uncomfortable was running. What was very uncomfortable was being on a diet. What was very uncomfortable was trying to face things that I didn’t want to face. And I also realized, when I was really big, I had no growth. Why? Because I was living comfortable.

When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love.

People always say that you can’t please everybody. I think that’s a cop-out. Why not attempt it? ‚Cause think of all the people you will please if you try.

There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.

Self-interest is the enemy of all true affection.

Until you have cultivated the habit of saying some kind word of those whom you do not admire, you will be neither successful nor happy.

Confession of errors is like a broom which sweeps away the dirt and leaves the surface brighter and clearer. I feel stronger for confession.

How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.

Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory.

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?

I am always wary of decisions made hastily. I am always wary of the first decision, that is, the first thing that comes to my mind if I have to make a decision. This is usually the wrong thing. I have to wait and assess, looking deep into myself, taking the necessary time.

Don’t talk about what you have done or what you are going to do.

I have nothing to ask but that you would remove to the other side, that you may not, by intercepting the sunshine, take from me what you cannot give.

It’s very hard to live with yourself if you don’t stick with your moral code.

When you start to realise how much of what you’ve constructed of yourself is based on deception and lies, that is a horrifying realisation.

Although I’m only fourteen, I know quite well what I want. I know who is right and who is wrong. I have my opinions, my own ideas and principles, and although it may sound pretty mad from an adolescent, I feel more of a person than a child. I feel quite independent of anyone.

The fool wonders, the wise man asks.

The ultimate tendency of civilization is towards barbarism.

Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves.

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

In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.

I was enjoying myself writing, because I don’t know what’s going to happen when I take a ride around that corner. You don’t know at all what you’re going to find there. That can be thrilling when you read a book, especially when you’re a kid and you’re reading stories.

Some people would like me to be round again.

I want to believe that I am improving. This is something that I take really seriously.

I came up from a difficult background.

I always wonder when it was that I was embraced.

I do the very best I know how – the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.

Somewhere deep down there’s a decent man in me, he just can’t be found.

I don’t think that much about my relationship with my mother and what it did to me. I sometimes feel terrible regret about her, what her life must have been like. Often, when I’m enjoying something, I think of how meager her rewards were and how much courage, in a way, she needed to go on living.

I grew up in a funny way.

Character develops itself in the stream of life.

If a woman possesses manly virtues one should run away from her; and if she does not possess them she runs away from herself.

Self-pity in its early stage is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.

I have lived long enough both in years and in accomplishments.

The person you consider ignorant and insignificant is the one who came from God, that he might learn bliss from grief and knowledge from gloom.

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.

When I write about a 15-year old, I jump, I return to the days when I was that age. It’s like a time machine. I can remember everything. I can feel the wind. I can smell the air. Very actually. Very vividly.

If you have the ability to pick yourself up by the bootstraps and start over, you come out stronger because you learn from whatever mistakes you made.

There is a need for aloneness, which I don’t think most people realise for an actor. It’s almost having certain kinds of secrets for yourself that you’ll let the whole world in on only for a moment, when you’re acting. But everybody is always tugging at you. They’d all like sort of a chunk of you.

I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized, and I still had a daughter who I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

Live one day at a time emphasizing ethics rather than rules.

All fiction is about people, unless it’s about rabbits pretending to be people. It’s all essentially characters in action, which means characters moving through time and changes taking place, and that’s what we call ‚the plot‘.

Humans are amphibians – half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.

All wrong-doing arises because of mind. If mind is transformed can wrong-doing remain?

When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.

I learned to fly a few years ago in England. It’s the only place I’m completely alone – up in the air, detached from everything.

It makes no sense to worry about things you have no control over because there’s nothing you can do about them, and why worry about things you do control? The activity of worrying keeps you immobilized.

You’ll never find a better sparring partner than adversity.

You know, it’s not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.

I conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they have made of the value of things.

Whenever I’m around some who is modest, I think, ‚Run like hell and all of fire.‘ You don’t want modesty, you want humility.

Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.

Try and leave this world a little better than you found it, and when your turn comes to die, you can die happy in feeling that at any rate, you have not wasted your time but have done your best.

I used to have a real problem with self-pity. Every time the devil would throw a pity party, I would attend.

When you smoke the herb, it reveals you to yourself.

Honestly, I’ve been thinking lately about how boring I am. When I do get time to myself, I watch TV.

In a universe that’s an intelligent system with a divine creative force supporting it, there simply can be no accidents. As tough as it is to acknowledge, you had to go through what you went through in order to get to where you are today, and the evidence is that you did.

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.