The past two decades revolutionized the way we access information. You and I can have our questions answered with the click of a mouse at any time of day. If America, both corporation and citizen alike, can use these services to solve problems, why can’t Washington?

When I was, like, 12, I remember grabbing a mic, pretending it was a guitar, and performing in front of my friends. I didn’t know at the time I wanted to be an artist.

I spent my twenties not really participating in the work force in any real way. I acted a tiny bit, but that was just because it was the only way I knew how to make money, and I sublet my apartment and lived in the woods and just tried to figure out who I was and what I wanted, what my real desire was and not just what I was used to doing, and it was a really confusing and painful, but really rich and amazing time.

I’ve followed the lives of great musicians and have learned that you don’t have to always write in pain. You have all of your past experiences, feelings, and thoughts that you can turn on when you need them and turn off when you don’t.

Every once in a while, we’d ask my dad if we could get a ride in one of these planes. And, he did take us to the flying club and get us a ride in the Pushpak and a glider that the flying club had.

I’ve learned that fear is simply an illusion based on past experiences that we project into the present and onto the future.

We can be the victim of the world we see, or we can choose to perceive difficult past experiences as a catalyst for change.

In the beginning, when I was doing my shows, I was incorporating a lot of Spanish, just trying to be a Latino comic instead of just a comic. Now I try to make the show as broad as possible… I don’t want to alienate people. I want to make it so everybody can follow along and everybody can relate.

No matter what, nobody can take away the dances you’ve already had.

We all face darkness at some point, but it’s in those times that we discover our own strength and resilience.

Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future.

I was at my best at a little past forty, when I was a professor at Oxford.

The Master said, “A true teacher is one who, keeping the past alive, is also able to understand the present.

Study the past if you would define the future.

I guess maybe when you get past 70, other people start asking you how you feel.

We cannot change our past. We can not change the fact that people act in a certain way. We can not change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude.

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

It’s in vain to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present.

You have to know the past to understand the present.

With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man’s past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.

In 1969 I gave up women and alcohol – it was the worst 20 minutes of my life.

We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dearly bought experience.

When I was a kid, if a guy got killed in a western movie I always wondered who got his horse.

My grandmother worked at one of those Bel-Air mansions, and we would go – not too often, but every now and then – to pick her up. Hollywood was probably 12 miles from my house, but it might as well have been a million miles away. The only time I saw that world was on TV. Until I started making records.

I am only 33, I’ve got a lot to do. This is the first half of my career. I’m looking forward to the future and I’m proud about the past.

If you think about stuff that happened when you were young,it stays with you forever.

I was 17 and out of school, living with my mom, starving, not eating, getting locked up, no focus, no guidance. When you ain’t got no guidance, you can’t do too much. But then I had my first son and started working. I got the right people around me.

I know what you did, don’t wanna hurt no more. Even though you took me through some hell.

We came from nothing really. One house. Ten people. Even days the lights were off. The worst day was not eating. Surviving off rice and toast.

The things you want are always possible; it is just that the way to get them is not always apparent. The only real obstacle in your path to a fulfilling life is you, and that can be a considerable obstacle because you carry the baggage of insecurities and past experience.

Looking back, I realize that this period of my life has irrevocably come to a close; my happy-go-lucky, carefree schooldays are gone forever. I don’t even miss them. I’ve outgrown them. I can no longer just kid around, since my serious side is always there.

If you are carrying strong feelings  about something that happened in your past, they may hinder your ability to live in the present.

How can I begin anything new with all of yesterday in me?