Respect your efforts, respect yourself. Self-respect leads to self-discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt, that’s real power.

I walk tall; I got a tall attitude.

Glam really did plant seeds for a new identity. I think a lot of kids needed that – that sense of reinvention. Kids learned that however crazy you may think it is, there is a place for what you want to do and who you want to be.

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.

Mindfulness practices enhance the connection between our body, our mind and everything else that is around us. Mindful living is the key to understanding our struggles with weight and to empowering us to control our weight.

Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way.

The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are.

Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to be full of them and to be unwilling to recognize them, since that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion.

The minute you start compromising for the sake of massaging somebody’s ego, that’s it, game over.

If a man empties his purse into his head, no one can take it from him.

Somebody once asked me what my theory of life was, and I said, ‚Don’t try.‘ That fits the writing, too. I don’t try; I just type.

Never regret what you don’t write.

Whatever you do may seem insignificant to you, but it is most important that you do it.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.

You’re always learning. The problem is, sometimes you stop and think you understand the world. This is not correct. The world is always moving. You never reach the point you can stop making an effort.

When we make progress quickly, it feeds our emotions. Then, when there’s a period of waiting or we hit a plateau, we find out how committed we really are and whether we’re going to see things through to the finish or quit.

With drive and a bit of talent, you can move mountains. I know. I’ve done it.

A great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.

The most valuable of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it has to be done, whether you like it or not.

I want to be an honest man and a good writer.

When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.

We were poor. But my mom never accepted that. She worked hard to become a residential contractor – got her master’s with honors at the University of New Orleans. I used to go to every class with her. Her father was my paternal figure.

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

I am so tired of fear. And I don’t want my girls to live in a country, in a world, based on fear.

Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.

I think everyone should approach relationships from the perspective of playing it straight and giving someone the benefit of the doubt. Until he establishes that this is a game. And if it’s a game, you need to win. The best thing to do is just walk away from the table.

Sometimes I wonder why I’m a novelist right now. There is no definite career reason why I became a writer. Something happened, and I became a writer. And now I’m a successful writer.

I don’t think human beings learn anything without desperation. Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything or creating anything. Period. If you ain’t desperate at some point, you ain’t interesting.

You may make some mistakes – but that doesn’t make you a sinner. You’ve got the very nature of God on the inside of you.

The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

Before you start some work, always ask yourself three questions – Why am I doing it, What the results might be and Will I be successful. Only when you think deeply and find satisfactory answers to these questions, go ahead.

A word of encouragement from a teacher to a child can change a life. A word of encouragement from a spouse can save a marriage. A word of encouragement from a leader can inspire a person to reach her potential.

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.

I’m going to use all my tools, my God-given ability, and make the best life I can with it.

If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn’t be anything for us to do.

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.

The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free.

God wants you to be a winner, not a whiner.

Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.

So many objections may be made to everything, that nothing can overcome them but the necessity of doing something.

Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best.

Just try new things. Don’t be afraid. Step out of your comfort zones and soar, all right?

Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.

‚Happiness‘ is a pointless goal.

Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.

Changing your mind is probably one of the most beautiful things people can do. And I’ve changed my mind about a lot of things over the years.

Life doesn’t require that we be the best, only that we try our best.

You want me to own a team and deal with these rich, spoiled stubborn athletes, and try to get them to perform? No thank you.

Above anything else, I hate to lose.

When a team takes ownership of its problems, the problem gets solved. It is true on the battlefield, it is true in business, and it is true in life.

For me, money is not my definition of success. Inspiring people is a definition of success.

Self-talk, for me, has been the biggest thing in my life. A lot of us have a dialogue that is crap. It’s a crappy dialogue. We live in a world right now that is very external. Everything is very on the surface. Superficial. Everything. And what we’re telling ourselves is what we see on TV.

If you go to work on your goals, your goals will go to work on you. If you go to work on your plan, your plan will go to work on you. Whatever good things we build end up building us.

Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way. And don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines.

I’m always disappointed when people don’t live up to their potential. I know that a number of people look down on themselves and consequently on everybody who looks like them. But that, too, can change.

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.

We are Divine enough to ask and we are important enough to receive.

I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion.

Alas! You complain that your soul is out of tune. Then ask the Master to tune the heart-strings.

You don’t want to pigeonhole yourself.