Critics only make you stronger. You have to look at what they are saying as feedback. Sometimes the feedback helps, and other times, it’s just noise that can be a distraction.

Nobody climbs mountains for scientific reasons. Science is used to raise money for the expeditions, but you really climb for the hell of it.

As far as I’m concerned, I’m a writer who’s writing books, and therefore, I don’t want to die. You’d miss the end of the book wouldn’t you? You can’t die with an unfinished book.

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it’s better than college. People should educate themselves – you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I’d written a thousand stories.

I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.

The thermometer of success is merely the jealousy of the malcontents.

No one has ever drowned in sweat.

When you’re older you want to learn from other people.

Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.

If someone is going down the wrong road, he doesn’t need motivation to speed him up. What he needs is education to turn him around.

In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head.

To deal with individual human needs at the everyday level can be noble sometimes.

Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven’t courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.

If everything was perfect, you would never learn and you would never grow.

Most of my young years were spent under the boots of the military.

Never complain and never explain.

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Age merely shows what children we remain.

The highest reward that God gives us for good work is the ability to do better work.

If you change and adapt your persona, you are seen as inauthentic; if you stay the angry young man, you fade from attention or seem tiresome.

Milk is for babies. When you grow up you have to drink beer.

The best workers, like the happiest livers, look upon their work as a kind of game: the harder they play the more enjoyable it becomes.

Every person who wins in any undertaking must be willing to cut all sources of retreat. Only by doing so can one be sure of maintaining that state of mind known as a burning desire to win – essential to success.

Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be.

Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference.

To learn something but not to do is really not to learn. To know something but not to do is really not to know.

If the leader is filled with high ambition and if he pursues his aims with audacity and strength of will, he will reach them in spite of all obstacles.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.

‚Worry‘ is a word that I don’t allow myself to use.

You must take the compromise to win, or else nothing. That means: you race or you do not.

Childhood is the sleep of reason.

My husband has quite simply been my strength and stay all these years, and I owe him a debt greater than he would ever claim.

We do not rejoice in victories. We rejoice when a new kind of cotton is grown and when strawberries bloom in Israel.

We should learn to accept that change is truly the only thing that’s going on always, and learn to ride with it and enjoy it.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.

I have so much in my life. I want to be of value to the world.

Freedom is what everyone wants – to be able to act and live with freedom. But the only way to get to a place of freedom is through discipline.

The richest people in the world look for and build networks; everyone else looks for work.

As fire when thrown into water is cooled down and put out, so also a false accusation when brought against a man of the purest and holiest character, boils over and is at once dissipated, and vanishes and threats of heaven and sea, himself standing unmoved.

I always make my dreams into goals.

Ninety percent of all music is always crap, and when too many people decide they’re going to have guitar bands, then ninety percent of them are going to be crap. It’s just a given law.

Consider a tree for a moment. As beautiful as trees are to look at, we don’t see what goes on underground – as they grow roots. Trees must develop deep roots in order to grow strong and produce their beauty. But we don’t see the roots. We just see and enjoy the beauty. In much the same way, what goes on inside of us is like the roots of a tree.

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

I’m my own worst critic, and if I don’t pull off what I think I wanted to do in my head, then I won’t be a happy girl.

Everybody will make mistakes, and for some that mistake will rise to the level of being a crime.

Grow in the root of all grace, which is faith. Believe God’s promises more firmly than ever. Allow your faith to increase in its fullness, firmness, and simplicity.

Anything you really want, you can attain, if you really go after it.

In a gentle way, you can shake the world.

The boy who is going to make a great man must not make up his mind merely to overcome a thousand obstacles, but to win in spite of a thousand repulses and defeats.

I’m never going to be fast, and nobody will ever mistake me for being fast.

When I was nine years old, living on the south side of Chicago, my father was a minister and my mother used to scrub floors. I had seven brothers and four sisters. I told my mama, ‚One of these days I’m going to be big and strong and buy you a beautiful house.‘ That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do with my life, is to take care of my mother.

A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.

When you play sports like tennis, you’re alone, and that’s a good school for life, but it’s also a good school for life to bring your best and make those around you better, too – helping others in difficult moments.

Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.

Don’t give in to excuses that can keep you from really living the best life God has for you.

If you get knocked down – setbacks in life, like applying for a job if they don’t hire you – keep trying, keep getting up, keep doing it.

Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.

When you write your first book aged 25 or so, you have 25 years of experience, albeit much of it juvenile experience. The second book comes after an extra year sitting in bookshops. Pretty soon, you begin to run on empty.