Don’t ever forget two things I’m going to tell you. One, don’t believe everything that’s written about you. Two, don’t pick up too many checks.

Early on in my life, I had a broken soul. I was abused by my father, abandoned by my mother and ended up in a destructive first marriage. By the time I was 23, I was broken in my soul. I didn’t know how to think right. I felt wrong about everything. But God stepped into my life, and I came out on the other side and didn’t even smell like smoke.

First, I’m trying to prove to myself that I’m a person. Then maybe I’ll convince myself that I’m an actress.

I want to work; then, as my kids get older, I want to have adventures. I want to visit all their countries: learn and live inside all their cultures.

I don’t care if people I admire criticize me because their opinion is valuable to me.

Give yourself more opportunities for privacy, when you are not bombarded with duties and obligations. Privacy is not a rejection of those you love; it is your deserved respite for recharging your batteries.

What it’s like to be me? You know, it’s good to be me. My life is good.

Marriage destroyed my relationship with two wonderful men.

I have inhaled, exhaled everything.

Some people have a hard time getting rid of stuff. If that’s you, pray for God to give you the courage to get rid of things you don’t really need or things He wants you to give away. This will help keep your surroundings organized and clutter-free.

We are dying from overthinking. We are slowly killing ourselves by thinking about everything. Think. Think. Think. You can never trust the human mind anyway. It’s a death trap.

The man who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely the one who dropped it.

A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with – a man is what he makes of himself.

I’m a religious woman. And I feel I have responsibility. I have no modesty at all. I’m even afraid of it – it’s a learned affectation and it’s just stuck on me like decals. Now I pray for humility because that comes from inside out.

In past generations, people would try to play younger than they really are. My trick is, I don’t try to play younger than I really am.

There’s no way to remove the observer – us – from our perceptions of the world.

There is an innocence in admiration; it is found in those to whom it has never yet occurred that they, too, might be admired some day.

Know your worth! People always act like they’re doing more for you than you’re doing for them.

I’ve never responded well to entrenched negative thinking.

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.

Never say anything about yourself you do not want to come true.

If I went back to my 20-year-old self, what I would tell my 20-year-old self is, ‚You don’t know anything.‘ Because everyone, when they’re young, they think they know what’s going on in the world, and you don’t.

Personally I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

Affirmation without discipline is the beginning of delusion.

I was a housewife, so I learned to write in times off, and I don’t think I ever gave it up, though there were times when I was very discouraged because I began to see that the stories I was writing were not very good, that I had a lot to learn, and that it was a much, much harder job than I had expected.

Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.

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.

Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die; do not outlive yourself.

We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.

Many people know so little about what is beyond their short range of experience. They look within themselves – and find nothing! Therefore they conclude that there is nothing outside themselves either.

By imposing too great a responsibility, or rather, all responsibility, on yourself, you crush yourself.

I feel like I have a job to do, like I constantly have to reinvent myself. The more I up the ante for myself, the better it is in the long run. I try to interact with my fans as much as possible. It’s good that the person I’m being onstage isn’t really an act. It’s really me.

Once you begin to fall off the track and believe you breathe different air to everyone else, you’re doomed; you’re finished.

If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.

Why do people sit up so late, or, more rarely, get up so early? Not because the day is not long enough, but because they have no time in the day to themselves.

I think dress, hairstyle and make-up are the crucial factors in projecting an attractive persona and give one the chance to enhance one’s best physical features.

The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.

I will not be triumphed over.

The essential lesson I’ve learned in life is to just be yourself. Treasure the magnificent being that you are and recognize first and foremost you’re not here as a human being only. You’re a spiritual being having a human experience.

We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.

I am a sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

Ah! yes, I know: those who see me rarely trust my word: I must look too intelligent to keep it.

When you stop caring what people think, you lose your capacity for connection. When you’re defined by it, you lose our capacity for vulnerability.

The image is one thing and the human being is another. It’s very hard to live up to an image, put it that way.

How one life turns out is not dependent on what people do to us or what they don’t do for us.

I think it’s quite great to set yourself a big challenge, and then you’ve got another reason for keeping fit.

Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly.

I’m happy being myself, which I’ve never been before. I always hid in other people, or tried to find myself through the characters, or live out their lives, but I didn’t have those things in mine.

Every seven years, I sit down and make a whole new plan.

‚Fame‘ exhausts me.

Why go through life if you’re not going to challenge yourself?

In my case Pilgrim’s Progress consisted in my having to climb down a thousand ladders until I could reach out my hand to the little clod of earth that I am.

How lucky Adam was. He knew when he said a good thing, nobody had said it before.

The game is changing with songs like ‚Earned It‘ as opposed to it changing me.

In less than a hundred years, we have found a new way to think of ourselves. From sitting at the center of the universe, we now find ourselves orbiting an average-sized sun, which is just one of millions of stars in our own Milky Way galaxy.

It was really hard for them to intimidate me. They felt I was intimidating. One of the growers had a name for me: I think it was ‚dragon lady‘ or something like it.

The world can criticize me, but l can always criticize it back.

These are the soul’s changes. I don’t believe in ageing. I believe in forever altering one’s aspect to the sun. Hence my optimism.

We should not underestimate ourselves, because if lots of individuals go together then we can accomplish almost anything.

We need to steer clear of this poverty of ambition, where people want to drive fancy cars and wear nice clothes and live in nice apartments but don’t want to work hard to accomplish these things. Everyone should try to realize their full potential.