Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me. Not only because I’ve never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl.

Today I love myself as I love my god: who could charge me with a sin today? I know only sins against my god; but who knows my god?

To create something you must be something.

I long remained a child, and I am still one in many respects.

I disagree with everything I used to say.

I could never identify with that word, ‚weak.‘

I think I should learn French and be a better cook – basic, really good life stuff.

It is after all the greatest art to limit and isolate oneself.

The only thing I have to go by is what my mother and father told me, how I was brought up.

We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong.

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

It is a fine thing to have ability, but the ability to discover ability in others is the true test.

I look at myself like a show dog. I’ve got to keep her clipped and trimmed and in good shape.

If you are a leader, you should never forget that everyone needs encouragement. And everyone who receives it – young or old, successful or less-than-successful, unknown or famous – is changed by it.

Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future.

The more man meditates upon good thoughts, the better will be his world and the world at large.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.

We are looking for happiness and running after it in such a way that creates anger, fear and discrimination. So when you attend a retreat, you have a chance to look at the deep roots of this pollution of the collective energy that is unwholesome.

Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.

If you desire to be good, begin by believing that you are wicked.

You cannot have a positive life and a negative mind.

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.

Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.

You are victors, not victims!

I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.

I like to recede away from classifications. You might say that indicates a fundamental lack of commitment. I suppose that’s true to some degree.

The important thing is that men should have a purpose in life. It should be something useful, something good.

Everyone must be proactive and do all they can to help themselves to stay employed.

Every spirit makes its house, and we can give a shrewd guess from the house to the inhabitant.

Accountability breeds response-ability.

You might well remember that nothing can bring you success but yourself.

My concern today is not with the length of a person’s hair but with his conduct.

You leave old habits behind by starting out with the thought, ‚I release the need for this in my life‘.

Better is the enemy of good.

My whole thing now is I know how to think properly to be successful in all aspects of my life. It’s not about ultra running or being a SEAL or pull-up records: it’s about if you want to be better you, have to change your perceived limitations and take the barriers down.

You have to come to your closed doors before you get to your open doors… What if you knew you had to go through 32 closed doors before you got to your open door? Well, then you’d come to closed door number eight and you’d think, ‚Great, I got another one out of the way’… Keep moving forward.

Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you’ve conquered human nature.

People don’t usually compliment your character.

Who had deceived thee so often as thyself?

It’s much worse to read criticism about your son than yourself.

I’m so wrapped up in my work that it’s often impossible to consider other things in my life. My marriage ended in divorce because of this, my relationship with Holly has suffered by this.

The wise use of your freedom to make your own decisions is crucial to your spiritual growth, now and for eternity.

Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself. But mankind wasn’t always so lucky. Less than a century ago, men and women did not have easy access to the puzzle boxes within them.

I think who you are in school really sticks with you.

We are born weak, we need strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish, we need reason. All that we lack at birth, all that we need when we come to man’s estate, is the gift of education.

God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another.

There are a lot of things I never did, because I believe in watching those true Hollywood stories and I see how easy it is to lose track of your life.

Real education enhances the dignity of a human being and increases his or her self-respect. If only the real sense of education could be realized by each individual and carried forward in every field of human activity, the world will be so much a better place to live in.

I don’t think I am evangelical in my work.

The art of being a slave is to rule one’s master.

I have many regrets, and I’m sure everyone does. The stupid things you do, you regret… if you have any sense, and if you don’t regret them, maybe you’re stupid.

Getting old is a fascination thing. The older you get, the older you want to get.

Everybody has done something that we wish we didn’t say or do and wish we could take it back.

I always wonder when it was that I was embraced.

You learn a lot in life but there are a lot of tools and resources in school that help you grow professionally and personally for whatever goal you may want to achieve.

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.

I don’t know if I particularly want to be remembered for anything. I personally do not think I’m a great gift to the world. I’ve been very fortunate.

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.

My earliest books focus almost entirely on psychological tools to help readers employ effective commonsense approaches to problems. There are no references to God or a higher self in the first 15 or so years of my publishing history.

Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving to be our best. Perfectionism is not about healthy achievement and growth; it’s a shield.

I walk every day, and I look at the mountains and the fields and the small city, and I say: ‚Oh my God, what a blessing.‘ Then you realise it’s important to put it in a context beyond this woman, this man, this city, this country, this universe.