Boys do cry, but I don’t think I shed a tear for a good chunk of my teenage years.

Why am I a star? It can’t be because of looks.

You have to be willing to go to war with yourself and create a whole new identity.

Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.

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.

Man needs his difficulties because they are necessary to enjoy success.

Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.

I always had faith in my creative capacity.

It’s hard to practice compassion when we’re struggling with our authenticity or when our own worthiness is off-balance.

There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect.

The true identity theft is not financial. It’s not in cyberspace. It’s spiritual. It’s been taken.

All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me… You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.

I had a really good childhood up until I was nine, then a classic case of divorce really affected me.

If you haven’t forgiven yourself something, how can you forgive others.

In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself.

Students achieving Oneness will move on to Twoness.

In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.

A game is like a mirror that allows you to look at yourself.

Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself.

To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.

In 7th grade, I believe, I wrote my first rap song. It was about everything I was seeing, everything that was going on around me.

The CIA is made up of boys whose families sent them to Princeton but wouldn’t let them into the family brokerage business.

I think that as you grow up, as you get older, we can’t get bitter, we can’t get jaded.

Although the circumstances of our lives may seem very disengaged, with me standing here as the First Lady of the United States of America and you just getting through school, I want you to know we have very much in common. For nothing in my life ever would have predicted that I would be standing here as the first African-American First Lady.

You’re going to go through tough times – that’s life. But I say, ‚Nothing happens to you, it happens for you.‘ See the positive in negative events.

I don’t know, I feel desperate when I sing. And I look desperate – it feels like I’m singing for my life, which makes me twitch, if that makes sense.

One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.

I went through every emotion with tryna pursue what I’m doing, you know what I mean? And I think what’s gon‘ separate whoever’s gon go for something, that you ain’t gon‘ quit.

I just want to be myself.

I’m a movie maker, but I have the same feelings as the average guy out there.

Even with my divorce and with everything, I don’t need money.

Control your own destiny! Control your own destiny!

I love money because I’ve earned it. I won sixty G’s with my first knockout – and the week before, I was collecting social welfare.

Make bold choices and make mistakes. It’s all those things that add up to the person you become.

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.

My work is about my life, and what I want to do with it.

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.

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‚I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.‘

We have the tendency to run away from suffering and to look for happiness. But, in fact, if you have not suffered, you have no chance to experience real happiness.

People have so much going on in their heads. I’m like, If you could write a song, you’d feel so much better!

I’m intimidated by the fear of being average.

You can never really live anyone else’s life, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you’ve become yourself.

I have offended God and mankind because my work didn’t reach the quality it should have.

Concentration is one of the happiest things in my life.

Don’t feel sorry for me.

People may hear your words, but they feel your attitude.

I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don’t always agree with them.

Man has two great spiritual needs. One is for forgiveness. The other is for goodness.

We cannot live being obsessed with what other people think about us. It’s impossible to live like that. Not even God managed to please the entire world.

If you’re going to be a winner in life, you have to constantly go beyond your best.

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

Always first draw fresh breath after outbursts of vanity and complacency.

Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.

I suppose for a very long time I’ve been trying to understand how it is that people might make sense out of their lives and make meaning and make their lives meaningful in the face of the trouble that life brings.

No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.

Live out of your imagination, not your history.

How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults, or resolution enough to mend them.

All of us are mentors. You’re mentors right here and now. And one of the things I’ve always done throughout my life, I have always found that person, that group of people that I was going to reach my hand out and help bring them along with me.

Let the refining and improving of your own life keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others.

The reason I became 297 pounds is because that was comfortable. What was very uncomfortable was running. What was very uncomfortable was being on a diet. What was very uncomfortable was trying to face things that I didn’t want to face. And I also realized, when I was really big, I had no growth. Why? Because I was living comfortable.

When people get taken over by the ego to such an extent, there is nothing else in their mind except the ego. They can no longer feel or sense their humanity – what they share with other human beings, or even with other life forms on the planet. They are so identified with concepts in their minds that other human beings become concepts as well.