I try to not focus on what people expect from me.

If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.

If you think dealing with issues like worthiness and authenticity and vulnerability are not worthwhile because there are more pressing issues, like the bottom line or attendance or standardized test scores, you are sadly, sadly mistaken. It underpins everything.

I think that I do feel that my nature is to express what this self, this particular self at this time, experiences in the world. And that is so organic – I use this metaphor a lot but I’ll use it again – it’s like a pine tree producing pine cones, or a blackberry bush producing blackberries – it’s just what happens with this being, now.

An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.

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.

You can bear your own faults, and why not a fault in your wife?

The temptation to take the easy road is always there. It is as easy as staying in bed in the morning and sleeping in. But discipline is paramount to ultimate success and victory for any leader and any team.

I never wanted to write the sort of song that said, ‚Look at how abnormal and crazy and out there I am, man!‘

I always felt that if I was going to do a movie, I wanted it to be authentic.

Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.

It is the nature of every person to error, but only the fool perseveres in error.

Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed was the ninth beatitude.

If they can make penicillin out of mouldy bread, they can sure make something out of you.

Humility is the solid foundation of all virtues.

It is a hard thing to let go of mistakes we’ve made and sins. God wants us to do that because He knows the guilt and the condemnation will keep us from becoming who He has created us to be.

No one can give you better advice than yourself.

Be happy with being you. Love your flaws. Own your quirks. And know that you are just as perfect as anyone else, exactly as you are.

To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.

The more you seek the uncomfortable, the more you will become comfortable.

I’m intimidated by the fear of being average.

Few people realize that luck is created.

I think, often, people who run away are people who got into things most enthusiastically, and then they want more. They just demand more of life than what is happening in the moment. Sometimes this is a great mistake, as it’s always a good deal different than you expect it.

So many people live with anger and unforgiveness, and many of them are Christians.

If you’re performing music that is not who you are or where you’re at, it is painful. It’s painful for the performer and for the audience.

A warrior is not a person that carries a gun. The biggest war you ever go through is right between your own ears. It’s in your mind. We’re all going through a war in our mind, and we have to callus our mind to fight that war and to win that war.

I don’t believe in pessimism. If something doesn’t come up the way you want, forge ahead. If you think it’s going to rain, it will.

As for my own views, they’ve of course evolved over the years. This conception of ‚renouncing beliefs‘ is very odd, as if we’re in some kind of religious cult. I ‚renounce beliefs‘ practically every time I think about the topics or find out what someone else is thinking.

I’m working at trying to be a Christian, and that’s serious business. It’s like trying to be a good Jew, a good Muslim, a good Buddhist, a good Shintoist, a good Zoroastrian, a good friend, a good lover, a good mother, a good buddy – it’s serious business.

Friends accept you the way you are.

Your philosophy determines whether you will go for the disciplines or continue the errors.

Getting stress out of your life takes more than prayer alone. You must take action to make changes and stop doing whatever is causing the stress. You can learn to calm down in the way you handle things.

There’s a difference in thinking you are a champion and knowing that you are.

Never let your ego get so close to your position that when your position goes, your ego goes with it.

If your only goal is to become rich, you will never achieve it.

If I read a book that impresses me, I have to take myself firmly by the hand, before I mix with other people; otherwise they would think my mind rather queer.

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.

You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.

Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

Think big thoughts but relish small pleasures.

Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.

It is easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.

The more man meditates upon good thoughts, the better will be his world and the world at large.

People who don’t know the true character of God – who don’t believe He is merciful, gracious and slow to anger – can never have a close, personal, intimate relationship with Him.

We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.

I break ground. I trailblaze.

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.

To a profound pessimist about life, being in danger is not depressing.

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

The only things worth learning are the things you learn after you know it all.

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

I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.

I know where I’m going and I know the truth, and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want.

Never do things others can do and will do if there are things others cannot do or will not do.

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?

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

Imagine for yourself a character, a model personality, whose example you determine to follow, in private as well as in public.

Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it.

I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end… I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.