It’s hard to be clear about who you are when you are carrying around a bunch of baggage from the past. I’ve learned to let go and move more quickly into the next place.

Let my skin and sinews and bones dry up, together with all the flesh and blood of my body! I welcome it! But I will not move from this spot until I have attained the supreme and final wisdom.

O‘ What may man within him hide, though angel on the outward side!

Why do I not seek some real good; one which I could feel, not one which I could display?

Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there’s time, the Bastard Time.

We acquire the strength we have overcome.

I enjoy competition. I enjoy challenges. If a challenge is in front of me and it appeals to me, I will go ahead and conquer it.

Knowing that the time to sleep has come, the Lord sleeps, and does well in sleeping. Often, when we have been fretting and worrying, we should have glorified God far more had we literally gone to sleep.

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.

In 7th grade, I believe, I wrote my first rap song. It was about everything I was seeing, everything that was going on around me.

In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.

In my younger days, I was trying to write sophisticated prose and fantastic stories.

If you haven’t forgiven yourself something, how can you forgive others.

It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.

Most people want to avoid pain, and discipline is usually painful.

There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.

It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting.

What I’ve learned is that you really don’t need to be a celebrity or have money or have the paparazzi following you around to be famous.

When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.

I used to worry about every little thing, trying to figure out every problem. Well, I realize now how foolish that was. I was no more in control of my life than the man on the moon.

Make bold choices and make mistakes. It’s all those things that add up to the person you become.

If I wouldn’t have found Courtney, I probably would have carried on with a bisexual lifestyle.

Prison life, fortunately, I spent a lot of years, about 18 years with other prisoners, and, as I say, they enriched your soul.

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‚I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.‘

I remember, when I was a young guy in the SEAL teams, I was very afraid of making mistakes and looking stupid or doing dumb things and getting a bad reputation.

I am good, but not an angel. I do sin, but I am not the devil. I am just a small girl in a big world trying to find someone to love.

Oh, God, I struggle with low self-esteem all the time! I think everyone does. I have so much wrong with me, it’s unbelievable!

We all have a tendency to avoid our weaknesses. When we do that, we never progress or get any better.

If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.

Love is a state of being.

I cannot always control what goes on outside. But I can always control what goes on inside.

I want to challenge you today to get out of your comfort zone. You have so much incredible potential on the inside. God has put gifts and talents in you that you probably don’t know anything about.

Life is too short for long-term grudges.

Many people resented my impatience and honesty, but I never cared about acceptance as much as I cared about respect.

All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness.

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.

Fear is exciting for me.

I think beating myself up sometimes and knowing I am not happy when I do it makes me work harder to do a good job.

I am not the humblest person in the world. I admit that.

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.

People can try to reinvent themselves. I don’t think you can really change who you are, though, because who you are is pretty much where you came from and what you’ve done up to now.

Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.

I know that I always wanted things. I was always proud of my people, proud of my home, but I always wanted more. I think most people do.

When I wake up in the morning, I feel just like any other insecure 24-year-old girl.

My entire childhood was steeped in poverty. For me, poverty, in a way, was the first inspiration of my life, a commitment to do something for the poor.

I stopped doing drugs when I was 20. I was finished with drugs before Nirvana even started.

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.

No work or love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.

To go beyond is as wrong as to fall short.

Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me.

Vanity is the healthiest thing in life.

No man can reveal to you nothing but that which already lies half-asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.

Everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn our thoughts to God when everything is going well with us… While what we call ‚our own life‘ remains agreeable, we will not surrender it to Him. What, then, can God do in our interests but make ‚our own life‘ less agreeable to us, and take away the plausible sources of false happiness?

Money does not change people, people change.

Mere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o’clock in the morning can only produce writing that matches what they do. And that includes me.

Sexuality is one of the ways that we become enlightened, actually, because it leads us to self-knowledge.

Little by little, not by making big promises, I need to be calmer, read more, spend more time with my loved ones, and be more mindful about nature and environment.

The more you like yourself, the less you are like anyone else, which makes you unique.

I woke up one day and thought: ‚I want to write a book about the history of my body.‘ I could justify talking about my mother because it was in her body that my body began.

Don’t let the incidents which take place in life bring you low. And certainly don’t whine. You can be brought low, that’s OK, but don’t be reduced by them. Just say, ‚That’s life.‘

If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.