I’m not perfect.

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.

The wit knows that his place is at the tail of a procession.

There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November.

We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

Eventually you get to this point where you understand what you want to do and get across and sound like.

Well, I don’t think there’s any need for people to focus on my career.

Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.

I don’t really read a lot of newspapers. I don’t pay attention to what is being said or written about me. I’ve had lots of experiences in the past when I got too much into it. That sort of diverts your focus.

Sports are such a great teacher. I think of everything they’ve taught me: camaraderie, humility, how to resolve differences.

The mouth obeys poorly when the heart murmurs.

Many people, especially young people, would like to be more independent and on their own. But it is very difficult and they suffer from feelings of isolation. I think that is one reason why young readers support my work.

My reputation grows with every failure.

Everyone who wills can hear the inner voice. It is within everyone.

My weaknesses have always been food and men – in that order.

I grew up in a funny way.

A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others.

The ‚soul‘ is one of the words you can use to talk about your innermost being, the essence of who you are.

Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are any more themselves.

I would never exchange my life with anybody else’s.

It is never too late to give up our prejudices.

Fame is ultimately about the cycles of desire and how to do away with them or manage them well.

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

At one point I learned transcendental meditation. This was 30-something years ago. It took me back to the way that I naturally was as a child growing up way in the country, rarely seeing people. I was in that state of oneness with creation and it was as if I didn’t exist except as a part of everything.

I’ve never been reckless – it’s always calculated. I’m mischievous, but I’m calculated.

As you get older, the questions come down to about two or three. How long? And what do I do with the time I’ve got left?

At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.

Personally I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

I was becoming post-ideological.

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.

The narrow bandwidth of TV has made us think that we are stupider than we are.

The proper study of Man is anything but Man; and the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.

It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are the more gentle and quiet we become towards the defects of others.

The first decade of the twentieth century was not a great time to be born black and poor and female in St. Louis, Missouri, but Vivian Baxter was born black and poor, to black and poor parents. Later she would grow up and be called beautiful. As a grown woman she would be known as the butter-colored lady with the blowback hair.

People who say they don’t care what people think are usually desperate to have people think they don’t care what people think.

My father, who was jailed for stealing on more than one occasion, just abandoned his fatherly responsibilities and disappeared. I grew up working from the time I was nine years of age. Money was a big issue everywhere I lived.

You can never get enough of what you don’t want.

In this business you have to develop a thick skin, but I’m always going to feel everything. It’s my nature.

When I write about a 15-year old, I jump, I return to the days when I was that age. It’s like a time machine. I can remember everything. I can feel the wind. I can smell the air. Very actually. Very vividly.

Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.

I think I have to trust that you end up with the person you’re supposed to end up with, and that everything in between is there to teach you stuff.

Failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.

Knowing that you are going to die is, I suspect, the beginning of wisdom.

The utmost extent of man’s knowledge, is to know that he knows nothing.

I have had fun being who I became, so to speak.

I do the very best I know how – the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.

If you set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.

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

Such as we are made of, such we be.

The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.

I used to have insecurity about my finances, then I announced that I had debt, and now I don’t have any insecurities.

People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.

I have practically no private life. I’m already used to this and ready for it. Yes, sometimes it is hard, but it is the choice I made.

Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.

The paradox of education is precisely this – that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.

If you have the chance to be exposed to a loving, understanding environment where the seed of compassion, loving kindness, can be watered every day, then you become a more loving person.

Humble people ask for help.

Self-worth comes from one thing – thinking that you are worthy.

The highest result of education is tolerance.

The truth is something that burns. It burns off dead wood. And people don’t like having the dead wood burnt off, often because they’re 95 percent dead wood.