I think the best thing I ever did with my life was stand up and say I’ve got Alzheimer’s.

If you’re always under the pressure of real identity, I think that is somewhat of a burden.

Whenever you’re going through a tough time, generally, you become more compassionate, you become softer, you become more thoughtful, kinder. These are all spiritual qualities that will help you to align yourself with God and God consciousness rather than with a split fear-based consciousness.

Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.

If every choice you make comes from an honest place, you’re solid, and nothing anybody can say about you can rock you or change your opinion.

You will find as you grow older that courage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public life.

Some Christians feel guilty when they are doing something that isn’t ‚spiritual.‘ Somehow or another, they feel the need to hurry through the grocery store, dash through the house cleaning, and rush through all the daily aspects of life that seem irrelevant to their faith.

If something can corrupt you, you’re corrupted already.

Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

I’m not looking to freak people out – eating rodents or bugs. I don’t do that anymore.

I have a feeling that I make a very good friend, and I’m a good mother, and a good sister, and a good citizen. I am involved in life itself – all of it. And I have a lot of energy and a lot of nerve.

The first virtue in a soldier is endurance of fatigue; courage is only the second virtue.

The truth is: Belonging starts with self-acceptance. Your level of belonging, in fact, can never be greater than your level of self-acceptance, because believing that you’re enough is what gives you the courage to be authentic, vulnerable and imperfect.

Everything I read about hitting a midlife crisis was true. I had such a struggle letting go of youthful things and learning how to exist and have enthusiasm while settling into the comfort of an older age.

If we live a self-directed, self-motivated, self-centered life, always needing to get our own way, then we’re going to be miserable. In fact, many times we believe it’s our problems that are making us unhappy when, in reality, it’s because we’re focused on ourselves!

I think there is a sense of being forced at this time to look at America’s really large shadow and that’s not all that bad.

My father wasn’t perfect. He had a temper. I took some of that. He would snap, but the older he got, he started calming down. He learned about life, but the thing that he taught my whole family was that family was the most important thing and, no matter what, if a family member needs you, you go and help them out; you get there.

Vanity can create a very cruel space for you if you don’t know how to manage it.

If you have the ability to pick yourself up by the bootstraps and start over, you come out stronger because you learn from whatever mistakes you made.

We all have two lives: an inner life and an outer life. Your inner life is your soul life, which includes your mind, will and emotions. Your outer life is your physical life. And while God cares about every detail of your life, He is more concerned with your inner life than your outer life.

I think people should feel encouraged to be themselves.

Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.

I’m giving all that I have in this life. I’m opening up my notebook, and I’m saying everything in there out loud.

Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones.

You don’t need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.

Pick the day. Enjoy it – to the hilt. The day as it comes. People as they come… The past, I think, has helped me appreciate the present – and I don’t want to spoil any of it by fretting about the future.

I don’t think I’m an unlucky person.

I feel like my music has become a lot of things. It’s hard to label the evolution, but I like there to be an evolution. I just like to paint with all different kinds of colors.

But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is.

The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt.

We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or disappointment.

It makes no sense to worry about things you have no control over because there’s nothing you can do about them, and why worry about things you do control? The activity of worrying keeps you immobilized.

The first step in a person’s salvation is knowledge of their sin.

Narrow your life down to this moment. Your life situation may be full of problems – most life situations are – but find out if you have a problem at this moment. Do you have a problem now?

For me, ‚risky‘ is revealing what really happened in my life through music. Risky is writing confessional songs and telling the true story about a person with enough details so everyone knows who that person is.

It doesn’t take much to make me angry.

I’m too busy acting like I’m not Naive. I’ve seen it all, I was here first.

No such thing as a man willing to be honest – that would be like a blind man willing to see.

A leader who doesn’t hesitate before he sends his nation into battle is not fit to be a leader.

If there are people you haven’t forgiven, you’re not going to really awaken. You have to let go.

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

It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.

As you get older, the questions come down to about two or three. How long? And what do I do with the time I’ve got left?

I think I’m like most people – we fear the unknown and the things that have yet to come to pass, which are the very things that don’t deserve to be feared. When you give God complete control, it’s very hard not to be fearless.

Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey ‚people.‘ People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war… Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.

Without being the most confident person in the world, I think I am the right person for Liverpool.

Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

You will be as much value to others as you have been to yourself.

I’m almost like three people. There’s me the, Dolly, the person. There’s me, the star. And then there’s me, the manager.

It’s easy to become very self-critical when you’re an actor. Then you get critiqued by the critics. Whether you agree with them or not, people are passing judgment on you.

Just as courage is the danger of life, so is fear its safeguard.

The best books… are those that tell you what you know already.

My number one thing? Don’t overleverage yourself. Don’t say you can do something when you really can’t.

Being a full human being is difficult, frightening, and problematical.

The question of whether or not there is a God or truth or reality or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by books, by priests, philosopher’s or saviours. Nobody and nothing can answer the question but you yourself, and that is why you must know yourself – Immaturity lies only in total ignorance of self.

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

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

I briefly did therapy, but after a while, I realised it is just like a farmer complaining about the weather. You can’t fix the weather – you just have to get on with it.

Go to you bosom: Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.

Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.