Creation is a sustained period of bliss, even though the subject can still be very sad. Because there’s the triumph of coming through and understanding that you have, and that you did it the way only you could do it. You didn’t do it the way somebody told you to do it.

You’ll never find a better sparring partner than adversity.

War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.

Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.

What I admire most about Hillary is that she never buckles under pressure. She never takes the easy way out. And Hillary Clinton has never quit on anything in her life.

There is a tendency for things to right themselves.

You not supposed to feel down over whatever happen to you. I mean, you’re supposed to use whatever happen to you as some type of upper, not a downer.

In the world there is nothing more submissive and weak than water. Yet for attacking that which is hard and strong nothing can surpass it.

No untroubled day has ever dawned for me.

When you’re in hell, you forget how great you really are because you’re suffering and you forget the great things you’ve done.

If you’re going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you’re going to be locked up.

I like to be myself, and I don’t pretend. For instance, I don’t dress up for occasions; I am what I am.

We should not moor a ship with one anchor, or our life with one hope.

This has always been my life and no one else’s, and that’s how it’s always been since the day I came in it.

Intelligent people should learn from their experiences. With people on the street, the bad experience has beaten them.

Platitudes? Yes, there are platitudes. Platitudes are there because they are true.

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

I know where I’m going and I know the truth, and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want.

I do have a few little tattoos, but they were mostly done to cover scars because I’m so fair.

The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.

Failure means a stripping away of the inessential.

By the sole fact of his entering into ‚Thought,‘ man represents something entirely singular and absolutely unique in the field of our experience. On a single planet, there could not be more than one centre of emergence for reflexion.

No one has the right to be sorry for himself for a misfortune that strikes everyone.

Dave Mackay is my definition of a superstar. The man broke his leg three times, but wouldn’t be carried off. He walked off.

People have so many hang-ups about how other people live their lives. People always want to keep you in a little box, or they need to label you and fix you in time and location.

Our Heavenly Father loves you. He has created you to be successful and to have joy.

It doesn’t matter how long my hair is or what colour my skin is or whether I’m a woman or a man.

My mother raised me with God. We were poor financially, but we were rich spiritually.

I love that I can tell the truth and have people laugh at it.

Our vanity is hardest to wound precisely when our pride has just been wounded.

This above all, to refuse to be a victim.

Everyone assumes I practise all of my own laws but I don’t. I think anybody who did would be a horrible ugly person to be around.

Certain defects are necessary for the existence of individuality.

I wake up in the morning and my mind starts making sentences, and I have to get rid of them fast – talk them or write them down.

Arrange whatever pieces come your way.

There are some people who hate my guts. But that goes with the territory.

Where is the man who has the strength to be true, and to show himself as he is?

Yeah, I wasn’t chosen to be first. I was just chosen to command that flight. Circumstance put me in that particular role. That wasn’t planned by anyone.

I wish myself to be a prop, if anything, for my songs. I want to be the vehicle for my songs. I would like to colour the material with as much visual expression as is necessary for that song.

Storms of every sort, torrents, earthquakes, cataclysms, ‚convulsions of nature,‘ etc., however mysterious and lawless at first sight they may seem, are only harmonious notes in the song of creation, varied expressions of God’s love.

I specifically did not read other First Ladies‘ books, because I didn’t want to be influenced by how they defined the role. I knew that I would have to find this role – very uniquely and specifically to me and who I was.

Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life.

Why lie? I’m not going to be a hypocrite and say the opposite of what I think, like some others do.

I’m not a sheep.

Courage is being scared to death… and saddling up anyway.

Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you’re a human being, you feel, you suffer. You’re gay, you’re sick, you’re nervous or whatever.

If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.

From the dust of the earth, from the common elementary fund, the Creator has made Homo sapiens. From the same material he has made every other creature, however noxious and insignificant to us. They are earth-born companions and our fellow mortals.

Allow children to be happy in their own way, for what better way will they find?

I allow myself to fail. I allow myself to break. I’m not afraid of my flaws.

I just have a relationship with my imagination. It’s like my friend, almost.

Just as we develop our physical muscles through overcoming opposition – such as lifting weights – we develop our character muscles by overcoming challenges and adversity.

I find rebellion packaged by a major corporation a little hard to take seriously.

I really wanted to be a model when I was little. I loved photography, and I loved being on camera. But I was short and chubby, so I couldn’t. Anyway, being an artist is way more interesting than just being a model because it’s about you and what you want to be. You’re not being treated like a clothes hanger.

A person who is truly authentic doesn’t need to play a role in life, we think, but can simply be him – or herself.

Many people look at me and think they know me but they don’t at all. This is the real me. I am a humble person, a feeling person. A person who cares about others, who wants to help others.

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.

I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I’ve always been a freak. So I’ve been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I’m one of those people.

I would never exchange my life with anybody else’s.

Even with all the advantages of retrospect, and a lot of witnesses dead and gone, you can’t make your life look as if you intended it or you were consistent. All you can show is how you dealt with various hands.

For some reason, I’m really comfortable talking about my personal life in songs.