People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.

It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world, whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always, she had to admit, interesting.

Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

I don’t have the best track record with quotes.

I got teased my entire school life. What they were picking on I don’t even understand.

You know when you’re young and you see a play in high school, and the guys all have gray in their hair and they’re trying to be old men and they have no idea what that’s like? It’s just that stupid the other way around.

It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody.

If the Christian is a restorationist, a legalist, if he wants everything clear and safe, then he will find nothing. Tradition and memory of the past must help us to have the courage to open up new areas to God.

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.

No matter what your mission is, have some notion in your head. Forget the model, whether it’s government or nonprofit or profit. Ask yourself the more important question: Is my mission improving the world? Are you sure about it? Seek to disconfirm that all the time. And if you can, change your mission.

For a long time I was scared I’d find out I was like my mother.

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

Success is like reaching an important birthday and finding you’re exactly the same.

It’s very hard to find your own words – and you don’t actually exist until you have your own words.

As a shame researcher, I know that the very best thing to do in the midst of a shame attack is totally counterintuitive: Practice courage and reach out!

If you try to protect yourself from pain, it becomes a stone in your heart. But the more you learn to face things, the more likely that stone can become a pearl.

No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.

I grew up in a funny way.

I want to solidify as an artist and show that as I grow as a person and make mistakes and learn from them, I’m going to grow artistically.

A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar.

I always say this about my music, and music in general: Music is like a time capsule. Each album reflects what I’m going through or what’s going on in my life at that moment.

Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.

It’s always a struggle growing up in Akron.

Vulnerability is the birthplace of connection and the path to the feeling of worthiness. If it doesn’t feel vulnerable, the sharing is probably not constructive.

I once wanted to prove myself by being a great actress. Now I want to prove that I’m a person. Then maybe I’ll be a great actress.

Guarding your heart and protecting your dignity are a little bit more important than clarifying the emotions of someone who’s only texting you back three words. I’ve learned that from trying to figure out people who don’t deserve to be figured out.

Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.

To be angry is to revenge the faults of others on ourselves.

When I was into my 30s, I became increasingly depressed by rejection letters. I had had the feeling that by the time I was 30, I would be established. But I was not at all. By the time of ‚Lives of Girls and Women,‘ I was into my 40s and I had become more thin-skinned.

I had a lot of resistance, and not just to fame. I was always conscious of not changing.

The approach of liberty makes even an old man brave.

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.

I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.

To me, my house is always recreating what I lost in youth.

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

The person who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore.

When in doubt tell the truth.

Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.

I’ve got nothing to hide.

There’s definitely going to be things that I’m not very good at, things I can improve.

My whole life is a theater piece.

Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.

To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it.

Growing old has been the greatest surprise of my life.

God cannot be realized through the intellect. Intellect can lead one to a certain extent and no further. It is a matter of faith and experience derived from that faith.

The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

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.

At the outset, I want to say that the suggestion that the struggle in South Africa is under the influence of foreigners or communists is wholly incorrect. I have done whatever I did because of my experience in South Africa and my own proudly felt African background, and not because of what any outsider might have said.

I think the best thing I ever did with my life was stand up and say I’ve got Alzheimer’s.

The work is the work. The work is not me.

Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.

The best way to keep one’s word is not to give it.

You must be afraid, my son. That is how one becomes an honest citizen.

Now, you lose something in your life, or you come into a conflict, and there’s gonna come a time that you’re gonna know: There was a reason for that. And at the end of your life, all the things you thought were periods, they turn out to be commas. There was never a full stop in any of it.

If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure – the relationship so secret and private compared with relations with men. Why not write about it truthfully?

Courageous people do not fear forgiving, for the sake of peace.

I’m not trying to follow a set of rules and stuff. I’m just living my life.

And above all things, never think that you’re not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you at your own reckoning.

Once you say you’re going to settle for second, that’s what happens to you in life.