I don’t know that you can put a label on growth. I’m just me.

I was so rude when I was a little girl.

I think I lived those years very impersonally. It was almost as though I had erected someone outside myself who was the president’s wife. I was lost somewhere deep down inside myself. That is the way I felt and worked until I left the White House.

Mothers and daughters generally have fairly complex relationships, and ours was made much more so by Mother’s illness. She had Parkinson’s disease, which was not diagnosed for a long time… All that made me very self-protective, because for one thing, I didn’t want to get trapped.

Most people want to avoid pain, and discipline is usually painful.

I’ve never been pregnant, so I just feel God didn’t mean for me to have kids so that everybody else’s children could be mine.

Within all of us is a divine capacity to manifest and attract all that we need and desire.

For me, I used to be shy towards journalism because it wasn’t poetry. And then I realized that the events that I covered in essays that became journalism were actually great because they inspired me, and they became my muse.

I think carrying moral baggage is very dangerous for an artist. If you have a duty, it’s to be true and not cover up the cracks.

Self-actualized people are independent of the good opinion of others.

One thing I want to make clear, as far as my own rebirth is concerned, the final authority is myself and no one else, and obviously not China’s Communists.

I can handle pain.

I love playing ego and insecurity combined.

There’s definitely going to be things that I’m not very good at, things I can improve.

Egos are never nice. I have been a victim of it a lot of times in my career. Whenever I have used it, I have failed.

It’s still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air. When I write, I get all the weeping out.

Wanting to feel good is synonymous with wanting to feel God.

I have learned that as long as I hold fast to my beliefs and values – and follow my own moral compass – then the only expectations I need to live up to are my own.

Spiritual people don’t float around all day on clouds of glory; they live in the real world and deal with real issues in real ways.

First ask yourself: What is the worst that can happen? Then prepare to accept it. Then proceed to improve on the worst.

Choose people who lift you up.

A lot of the problems I had with fame I was bringing on myself. A lot of self-loathing, a lot of woe-is-me. Now I’m learning to see the positive side of things, instead of, like, ‚I can’t go to Kmart. I can’t take my kids to the haunted house.‘

The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.

I have never been able to renounce the light, the pleasure of being, and the freedom in which I grew up.

Of all acts of man repentance is the most divine. The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none.

I respect myself and insist upon it from everybody. And because I do it, I then respect everybody, too.

Playing in MLS was a great experience. It has boosted my confidence and I feel I have matured as a player.

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

I owe my solitude to other people.

Have you ever asked yourselves what you are going to do when you grow up? In all likelihood you will get married, and before you know where you are, you will be mothers and fathers; and you will then be tied to a job, or to the kitchen, in which you will gradually wither away. Is that all that your life is going to be?

The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.

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

See, when you drive home today, you’ve got a big windshield on the front of your car. And you’ve got a little bitty rearview mirror. And the reason the windshield is so large and the rearview mirror is so small is because what’s happened in your past is not near as important as what’s in your future.

Moral authority is never retained by any attempt to hold on to it. It comes without seeking and is retained without effort.

Freedom is not given to us by anyone; we have to cultivate it ourselves. It is a daily practice… No one can prevent you from being aware of each step you take or each breath in and breath out.

I think that I am better than the people who are trying to reform me.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

To be happy we must not be too concerned with others.

I don’t live in the past at all; I’m always wanting to do something new. I make a point of constantly trying to forget and get things out of my mind.

True glory takes root, and even spreads; all false pretences, like flowers, fall to the ground; nor can any counterfeit last long.

History will point out some of the things I did wrong and some of the things I did right.

I’ve never been a boyfriend kind of girl.

You cannot be lonely if you like the person you’re alone with.

The people in my songs are all me.

Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.

What I can say is that all my characters are searching for their souls, because they are my mirrors. I’m someone who is constantly trying to understand my place in the world, and literature is the best way that I found in order to see myself.

What interests me in life is curiosity, challenges, the good fight with its victories and defeats.

Remember, you can always stoop and pick up nothing.

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

The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?

The hardest thing for – not only an artist but for anybody to do is look themselves in the mirror and acknowledge, you know, their own flaws and fears and imperfections and put them out there in the open for people to relate to it.

God didn’t make a mistake when He made you. You need to see yourself as God sees you.

Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour, content to dwell in decencies for ever.

Until you have cultivated the habit of saying some kind word of those whom you do not admire, you will be neither successful nor happy.

I was born with a great gift, and sometimes with that comes a destructive streak.

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

Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone.

My ultimate goal is to end up being happy. Most of the time.

The good things of prosperity are to be wished; but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.

Power is like being a lady… if you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.

Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences.