Excess of grief for the dead is madness for it is an injury to the living and the dead know it not.

My ambition was to stop waiting tables. That was how I measured success: finally I was able to stop waiting tables and I was able to pay the rent and that was by being a stand-up comic. Not a very good stand-up comic but good enough to make a living.

Success is not a destination but the road that you're on. Being successful means that you're working hard and walking your walk every day. You can only live your dream by working hard towards it. That's living your dream.

Put paying your dues and all that puts so much into being a success. You have an understanding of what it's about being on your own for three or four years and living day to day on $3 or living in an apartment with no electricity.

As my father used to tell me the only true sign of success in life is being able to do for a living that which makes you happy.

Your success story is a bigger story than whatever you're trying to say on stage. Success makes life easier. It doesn't make living easier.

From this process has emerged a parallel process of translating traditional working and living values into a new political and economic power - a power increasingly based upon the strength of money and those material things money can purchase.

But my strength was in singing and songwriting which was a new discovery for me when I was 18. And I decided if I pursued songwriting which is what was closest to my heart then there would be no competition. I would just live my life being myself and living my dream.

You had no right to be born for you make no use of life. Instead of living for in and with yourself as a reasonable being ought you seek only to fasten your feebleness on some other person's strength.

One of the most difficult things for people who have been successful in sports is adapting to the daily world where you can't get an answer from someone until 5 o'clock tomorrow. There is always an excuse. Living 40 or 50 years like that doesn't get too exciting after a while.

Everyone thought I was going to die like a year later they didn't know. So I helped educate sports and then the world that a man living with HIV can play basketball. He's not going to give it to anybody by playing basketball.

America must be the teacher of democracy not the advertiser of the consumer society. It is unrealistic for the rest of the world to reach the American living standard.

I think we're living in a world where society is very difficult.

I think we are all interested in end-times ideas and also in the current climate that we are all living in where money is a little harder to come by things continue to get expensive gas prices are not too far from people's heads. There are more and more people. Human society's going to have real problems.

Tolerance is the price we pay for living in a free pluralistic society.

Are we Darwinists - where we live and let live? Or are we nurturing as a society? There has to be a standard of living that we decide to support.

Since I have come to America I am often asked whether my next novel will be set in America. I don't think it will. I think I will be living in America for some time to come but while living in America I would like to write about Japanese society from the outside.