Americans are far more remarkable than we give ourselves credit for. We’ve been so busy damning ourselves for years. We’ve done it all, and yet we don’t take credit for it.

Honestly, I could care less about other people’s opinions about me.

The more credit you give away, the more will come back to you. The more you help others, the more they will want to help you.

Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it.

I think that we have opportunities all around us – sometimes we just don’t recognize them.

To the dumb question, ‚Why me?‘ the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, ‚Why not?‘

Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.

I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again – as I always am when I write.

I was awfully curious to find out why I didn’t go insane.

Of course awards matter.

I think people take me as seriously as I want them to. They take me as seriously as I take myself – let’s put it that way.

Honor means that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he is. Fame is something which must be won; honor, only something which must not be lost.

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone.

The ego is only an illusion, but a very influential one. Letting the ego-illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self. Ego, the false idea of believing that you are what you have or what you do, is a backwards way of assessing and living life.

Adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is most beneficial to us.

I had my moments of being humiliated, and then I had moments of doing something humiliating. I’m glad I lived out both roles.

Take me seriously. Take me and my role seriously. Take my talent seriously.

With fame, you know, you can read about yourself, somebody else’s ideas about you, but what’s important is how you feel about yourself – for survival and living day to day with what comes up.

Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.

I can live for two months on a good compliment.

Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me. Not only because I’ve never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl.

I didn’t like the way I looked in pictures – when I saw myself on a digital camera, I was like, ‚Eesh.‘

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one’s key to the experience of others.

I even found it difficult to watch myself playing on TV because I couldn’t identify with the person on the screen. I couldn’t get to grips with it. It was as if it was all happening to someone else.

The mind of a 19-year-old is very different from the mind of a 26-year-old. You grow. You get into better relationships. You experience more, meet more people, better people. But when you’re in a dark hole at an earlier point in your life – you write about the mindset you’re in at that moment.

The human voice can never reach the distance that is covered by the still small voice of conscience.

For me, the opposite of scarcity is not abundance. It’s enough. I’m enough. My kids are enough.

Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone.

I’m not critic-proof, and I still take it personally, but I take it less personally now.

I walk every day, and I look at the mountains and the fields and the small city, and I say: ‚Oh my God, what a blessing.‘ Then you realise it’s important to put it in a context beyond this woman, this man, this city, this country, this universe.

But I think there are a set of experiences that turn a potential writer into a working writer, and then there are places in your life were you start to recognize what you want to do.

I am never satisfied with myself and that is what keeps me going – I have no post-satisfaction.

I was very depressed when I was 19… I would go back to my apartment every day and I would just sit there. It was quiet and it was lonely. It was still. It was just my piano and myself. I had a television and I would leave it on all the time just to feel like somebody was hanging out with me.

Every man, and for stronger reasons, every artist, wants to be recognized. So do I.

Why regret anything? Where does it get you to regret anything you’ve ever done in your life? It gets you nowhere. It’s a pathetic emotion that you can wallow in.

It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.

A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.

What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise although the philosophers generally call it recognition!

I think when the president of the United States calls for military action, he should do it for a united people, especially when the methods have been so cruel, so explicitly directed at Americans.

Barbra Streisand has accomplished so much, and Dustin Hoffman as well. They are down to earth and approachable. I admire that.

When you learn about the teaching and the practice of another tradition, you always have a chance to understand your own teaching and practice.

The best of us must sometimes eat our words.

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.

Breathe in deeply to bring your mind home to your body. Then look at, or think of, the person triggering this emotion: With mindfulness, you can see that she is unhappy, that she is suffering. You can see her wrong perceptions. You can see that she is not beautiful when she says things that are unkind.

I’m the only person of distinction who has ever had a depression named for him.

When I had to make a decision whether or not an activity was appropriate for the Sabbath, I simply asked myself, ‚What sign do I want to give to God?‘ That question made my choices about the Sabbath day crystal clear.

I’m so wrapped up in my work that it’s often impossible to consider other things in my life. My marriage ended in divorce because of this, my relationship with Holly has suffered by this.

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.

The man who can centre his thoughts and hopes upon something transcending self can find a certain peace in the ordinary troubles of life, which is impossible to the pure egoist.

To get a name can happen but to few; it is one of the few things that cannot be brought. It is the free gift of mankind, which must be deserved before it will be granted, and is at last unwillingly bestowed.

I have many regrets, and I’m sure everyone does. The stupid things you do, you regret… if you have any sense, and if you don’t regret them, maybe you’re stupid.

If human beings were shown what they’re really like, they’d either kill one another as vermin, or hang themselves.

It’s a very strange thing being recognized or looked upon as someone special.

There are things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.

Mere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o’clock in the morning can only produce writing that matches what they do. And that includes me.

I think my worst problem is actually living in the moment and understanding everything that’s going on. I feel like I’m in my own bubble.

Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.

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.

He who does not think much of himself is much more esteemed than he imagines.

The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.

When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isn’t a man of action. Action is a lack of balance. In order to act you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking.