I always knew who I was, and I always ran from my true purpose… I know what my job is. And I always ran from it.

Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.

There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.

Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something.

I didn’t live at school, I lived where I could and studied what I enjoyed studying. I took what I wanted from that education but was making my first record at the same time. I don’t know anyone from school. I was just leading a different life. I was really interested in writing and other things.

I used to go away for weeks in a state of confusion.

The world around me has changed, and I have learned to adapt but not change. But I’m changing into the woman I am meant to be.

When you make the finding yourself – even if you’re the last person on Earth to see the light – you’ll never forget it.

Sometimes, I think if you get away from what you’re called to do, it’s more of a distraction.

I am two with nature.

We were born to die and we die to live. As seedlings of God, we barely blossom on earth; we fully flower in heaven.

My music seems to have a bigger mission than I have, which is very soothing but also very strange because people see more in me than I see, which can be terrifying.

I’m not really concerned with portraying this tough warrior – I mean, that’s part of my job and I take that very seriously. But I don’t have anything to hide, and I’m not concerned with what people think.

To know oneself, one should assert oneself.

A calling is you feel – you look out and see the need – maybe it’s the need for the poor, to help poor people. Maybe it’s the need to get involved in the race problem, as Martin Luther King was – felt called.

The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.

We want to answer this classical question, who am I? So I think that most of our works are for art, or whatever we do, including science or religion, tried to answer that question.

Anytime I feel lost, I pull out a map and stare. I stare until I have reminded myself that life is a giant adventure, so much to do, to see.

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.

What I can say is that all my characters are searching for their souls, because they are my mirrors. I’m someone who is constantly trying to understand my place in the world, and literature is the best way that I found in order to see myself.

He too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers.

I’m a workin‘ girl.

It is my job to help the players react better.

Adventure is not outside man; it is within.

Commit yourself to a mighty purpose.

Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.

You gotta keep trying to find your niche and trying to fit into whatever slot that’s left for you or to make one of your own.

You don’t need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!

To some extent I happily don’t know what I’m doing. I feel that it’s an artist’s responsibility to trust that.

Washington is a very easy city for you to forget where you came from and why you got there in the first place.

The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot forever fence it out.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

I’m more of an adventurous type than a relationship type.

If you have a family mission statement that clarifies what your purpose is, then you use that as the criterion by which you make the decisions.

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

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

I go to all these photo shoots, and each time I figure out something new about myself and what I want to wear.

The more I grow in popularity, the lonelier it gets. Because you don’t really know me. You just know this part of me. You fell in love with that. But it’s way more intricate than what meets the surface.

The things that transfixed you as a child, that you found most exciting was not a passing fancy, but a message about what you’re supposed to do.

Fear is exciting for me.

Singleness of purpose is one of the chief essentials for success in life, no matter what may be one’s aim.

My family kinda hit the skids. We were experiencing poverty at that point. We all got a job, where the whole family had to work as security guards and janitors. And I just got angry.

Don’t be afraid to see what you see.

I got a greater purpose. God put something in my heart to get across, and that’s what I’m going to focus on, using my voice as an instrument and doing what needs to be done.

I came to China to follow my star and to steep myself in the raw regions of the universe.

I never thought I would be such a family-oriented guy; I didn’t think that was part of my makeup. But somebody said that as you get older, you become the person you always should have been, and I feel that’s happening to me.

You must pursue this investigation of Watergate even if it leads to the president. I’m innocent. You’ve got to believe I’m innocent. If you don’t, take my job.

Follow that will and that way which experience confirms to be your own.

Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.

Are you bored with life? Then throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart, live for it, die for it, and you will find happiness that you had thought could never be yours.

A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.

Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs.

Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly.

How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers names.

Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job, I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: ‚Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off, just like that, don’t you realize that?‘ They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn’t want to enter their minds.

A mission statement is not something you write overnight… But fundamentally, your mission statement becomes your constitution, the solid expression of your vision and values. It becomes the criterion by which you measure everything else in your life.

I found it hard to be young. When I was married in my twenties, I hated being regarded as ‚the little wife.‘ You don’t know what it was like then! I’d never even written a cheque. I had to ask my husband for money for groceries.

I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.

When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it’s best to let him run.

Love is an interesting thing. Perhaps I’ve never been in love before – I don’t really know? I think I have. I guess it’s subjective in that way.