You have people come into your life shockingly and surprisingly. You have losses that you never thought you’d experience. You have rejection and you have learn how to deal with that and how to get up the next day and go on with it.

There are many victories worse than a defeat.

No one can resist the idea of a crippled genius.

Sometimes, I want to talk on a song and be angry, because I am angry. Then there’s always a part of me that remembers that this record lives past my being angry, and so do I really want to be angry about that? Is that feeling going to have longevity?

The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult.

It’s a philosophy of life. A practice. If you do this, something will change, what will change is that you will change, your life will change, and if you can change you, you can perhaps change the world.

I don’t know what drives me to succeed.

You know, it’s not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.

Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.

It is better to do one’s own duty, however defective it may be, than to follow the duty of another, however well one may perform it. He who does his duty as his own nature reveals it, never sins.

One mustn’t close one’s eyes to difficulty and to shortcomings; the more one recognizes them, the less they upset one.

Success in its highest and noblest form calls for peace of mind and enjoyment and happiness which come only to the man who has found the work that he likes best.

My whole family have all been through a difficult time. My focus is my children, our children.

I am a child but I have to think and act like a woman, this business forces you to.

My freshman and sophomore years in high school, I spent a lot of time trying to get back on the right track. I was arrested multiple times by the time I was 16, so I had a little harder time trying to adjust like a lot of us do in high school.

Everyone is different. Everyone has different teams they’ve played on, coaches they’ve played for.

I want to put a ding in the universe.

I got the stern end of the stick. It was kind of that iron fist. I am who I am today because of my mother.

It’s important that we invest in America – literally. The terrorists wanted to destroy our economy, and we can’t let our system fall apart. We also have to invest in one another.

I guess I’m living in the present more than the past.

I like to take every day just searching my own heart, making sure that I’m on course, and I’m doing what God wants me to do. I’m real good with not looking to the critics and looking straight ahead.

When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.

Things do not always happen the way I would like them to happen, and I had better get used to that.

There are no limitations to the mind except those we acknowledge.

Everything negative – pressure, challenges – is all an opportunity for me to rise.

I have no time to think about other writers. I am too busy with my own problems.

Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war.

We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.

I can express myself.

Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it… that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear.

I can’t deal with someone wanting to take a relationship backward or needing space or cheating on you. It’s a conscious thing; it’s a common-sense thing.

The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.

When life is too easy for us, we must beware or we may not be ready to meet the blows which sooner or later come to everyone, rich or poor.

Prospering just doesn’t have to do with money.

I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough in me to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.

I always wanted a family.

Words are powerful; if you change your words, you can change your life.

You have to be tough and have a lot of faith.

I’ve learned that men and women who are living wholehearted lives really allow themselves to soften into joy and happiness. They allow themselves to experience it.

I was willing to accept what I couldn’t change.

There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still.

If you have to stand and fight, you train yourself so that you’re able to do it.

I want to believe that I am improving. This is something that I take really seriously.

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.

It’s not to much fun to know yourself too well or think you do – everyone needs a little conceit to carry them through & past the falls.

One of the most terrible feelings in the world is knowing that someone else doesn’t like you. Especially when you don’t know what you’ve done to deserve it.

Brad was a huge surprise to me. I think we were both the last two people who were looking for a relationship. I certainly wasn’t. I was quite content to be a single mom with Mad.

I am who I am and I say what I think. I’m not putting a face on for the record.

If we live a self-directed, self-motivated, self-centered life, always needing to get our own way, then we’re going to be miserable. In fact, many times we believe it’s our problems that are making us unhappy when, in reality, it’s because we’re focused on ourselves!

I never saw myself as a folk singer.

When a person is going through hell, and she encounters someone who went through hellish hell and survived, then she can say, ‚Mine is not so bad as all that. She came through, and so can I.‘

When you cease to exist, then who will you blame?

Founding a company is hard. Most of it isn’t smooth. You’ll have to make very hard decisions. You have to fire a few people. Therefore, if you don’t believe in your mission, giving up is easy. The majority of founders give up. But the best founders don’t give up.

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.

An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.

I want to be a man who is truthful and who won’t let pride get in the way of my ripping myself open to my partner and saying, ‚Here I am. This is me.‘ I feel there’s something powerful when a man reaches a point in his life when he can be completely vulnerable.

A man who is not afraid is not aggressive, a man who has no sense of fear of any kind is really a free, a peaceful man.

If there is only one thing in my life that I am proud of, it’s that I’ve never been a kept woman.

Talent and effort, combined with our various backgrounds and life experiences, has always been the lifeblood of our singular American genius.

Nothing’s ever easy as long as you go on living.