I had my moments of being humiliated, and then I had moments of doing something humiliating. I’m glad I lived out both roles.

A hustler has to deal with danger and risk. It’s part of the game. You cannot control it all, nor would you want to. Chaos, unknown factors are not something to be anxious about.

My favorite thing in life is writing about life, specifically the parts of life concerning love. Because, as far as I’m concerned, love is absolutely everything.

God has entrusted me with myself.

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

I love the natural world – it comes from my culture, which grew out of a people enslaved.

It is always your next move.

Sometimes, I want to talk on a song and be angry, because I am angry. Then there’s always a part of me that remembers that this record lives past my being angry, and so do I really want to be angry about that? Is that feeling going to have longevity?

It’s important that we invest in America – literally. The terrorists wanted to destroy our economy, and we can’t let our system fall apart. We also have to invest in one another.

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

I definitely connected to the fact that life gets out of control and you end up doing things and wishing you were doing other things instead.

The more successful I become, the more I need a man.

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

Students achieving Oneness will move on to Twoness.

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

I pass my life in preventing the storm from blowing down the tent, and I drive in the pegs as fast as they are pulled up.

When I was 8 years old I became a mute and was a mute until I was 13, and I thought of my whole body as an ear, so I can go into a crowd and sit still and absorb all sound. That talent or ability has lasted and served me until today.

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.

I don’t like it when people who are young act like they’re 40. That’s taking too much on. Putting up a shield and trying to act like you’re so mature or whatever – I don’t try to act mature. Some people might say I’m mature for my age, but it’s not something I’m trying to do, you know? I’m just me.

When fate hands you a lemon, make lemonade.

Truthfully, without over-egging it, as I often do, the library and journalism, those things made me who I am.

I learned, when I look in the mirror and tell my story, that I should be myself and not peep whatever everybody is doing.

I grew up in a funny way.

I’ve played with IVs before, during and after games. I’ve played with a broken hand, a sprained ankle, a torn shoulder, a fractured tooth, a severed lip, and a knee the size of a softball. I don’t miss 15 games because of a toe injury that everybody knows wasn’t that serious in the first place.

My main goal is to be a self-made man and have control over what’s mine.

As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world – that is the myth of the atomic age – as in being able to remake ourselves.

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.

I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.

I experience a period of frightening clarity in those moments when nature is so beautiful. I am no longer sure of myself, and the paintings appear as in a dream.

The best measure of a man’s honesty isn’t his income tax return. It’s the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

I got my own back.

I am grateful to be a woman. I must have done something great in another life.

I like to make people feel happy and superior in their reaction towards my appearance.

It is only to the individual that a soul is given.

I’m not arrogant enough to look back on my career and criticize my choices. It’s really not my place.

You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.

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

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

To this day, some of my closest friends say, ‚Gaga, you know, everything’s great. You’re a singer; your dreams have come true.‘ But, still, when certain things are said to you over and over again as you’re growing up, it stays with you and you wonder if they’re true.

Upon the subjects of which I have treated, I have spoken as I have thought. I may be wrong in regard to any or all of them; but, holding it a sound maxim that it is better only sometimes to be right than at all times to be wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them.

Good luck has its storms.

The man who acquires the ability to take full possession of his own mind may take possession of anything else to which he is justly entitled.

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

Washington is a very easy city for you to forget where you came from and why you got there in the first place.

Mental toughness is a lifestyle. It’s something that you live every single day of your life. When I was growing up, I was a lazy kid. I was a lazy kid, and everybody goes, ‚How did you get to where you’re at today? How did you get to where you’re running 200 miles at one time in 39 hours? Being so disciplined?‘

I’ve realized that being happy is a choice. You never want to rub anybody the wrong way or not be fun to be around, but you have to be happy. When I get logical and I don’t trust my instincts – Thats when I get in trouble.

In retrospect, I can see I couldn’t talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching about. Ha! Like, that sure made sense!

Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.

There’s always a bittersweet kind of thing, but I feel like everything had to work out the way it is. Everything that had to happen, happened.

When one has not had a good father, one must create one.

There are going to be good days and bad days. Bottom line.

If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.

The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then did – which was to hide.

Remember that life’s big changes rarely give advance warning.

If you’re serious, you really understand that it’s important that you laugh as much as possible and admit that you’re the funniest person you ever met. You have to laugh. Admit that you’re funny. Otherwise, you die in solemnity.

I like criticism. It makes you strong.

You have to develop ways so that you can take up for yourself, and then you take up for someone else. And so sooner or later, you have enough courage to really stand up for the human race and say, ‚I’m a representative.‘

If I love you, what business is it of yours?

Trouble has no necessary connection with discouragement. Discouragement has a germ of its own, as different from trouble as arthritis is different from a stiff joint.

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.