“We must never say, even in fun, that we are disheartened, because someone might take us at our word.”

Life is not a search for experience, but for ourselves. Having discovered our own fundamental level we realize that it conforms to our own destiny and we find peace.

Will power is only the tensile strength of one’s own disposition. One cannot increase it by a single ounce.

There is only one pleasure-that of being alive. All the rest is misery.

The only joy in the world is to begin. It is good to be alive because living is beginning, always, every moment.

To know the world, one must construct it.

Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one’s own pleasure is shared.

We can all do good deeds, but very few of us can think good thoughts.

If it is true that one gets used to suffering, how is it that as the years go one always suffers more? No, they are not mad, those people who amuse themselves, enjoy life, travel, make love, fight they are not mad. We should like to do the same ourselves.

I spent the whole evening sitting before a mirror to keep myself company.

It is not the actual enjoyment of pleasure that we desire. What we want is to test the futility of that pleasure, so as to be no longer obsessed by it.

You will hear words old and spent and useless like costumes left over from yesterday’s parties.

A consoling thought: what matters is not what we do, but the spirit in which we do it. Others suffer too; so much so that there is nothing in the world but suffering; the problem is simply to keep a clear conscience.

Things are revealed through the memories we have of them. Remembering a thing means seeing it only then for the first time.

Because, to despise money, one must have plenty of it.

We commit two wrongs when we fail to right a wrong.

Those philosophers who believe in the absolute logic of truth have never had to discuss it on close terms with a woman.

I felt a deep grief that crouched and stayed still as if it was afraid to move.

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.

I really can’t speak on others, but in a sense, I feel like every artist always has their problems with the industry because we all want to have our creative way.

He felt he had lost it for good, he knew what it was to have been in communication with her, and to be cast off again. In misery, his heart like a heavy stone, he went about unliving.

Love is never a fulfillment. Life is never a thing of continuous bliss. There is no paradise. Fight and laugh and feel bitter and feel bliss: and fight again. Fight, fight. That is life.

I feel like Houston is one of the leading things in music culture. Everyone loves the Houston culture. It needs to have its own monument, its own moment for artists like me, artists like Beyonce who set it off.

I would rather sit still in a state of peace on a stone than ride in the motor-car of a multi-millionaire and feel the peacelessness of the multi-millionaire poisoning me.

I feel like I have had the most amazing life in my public service.