I wake up in the morning and my heart is light, man. It’s not heavy. I don’t have skeletons in the closet on their way out.

Sometimes I feel my whole life has been one big rejection.

Discipline starts every day when the first alarm clock goes off in the morning. I say ‚first alarm clock‘ because I have three, as I was taught by one of the most feared and respected instructors in SEAL training: one electric, one battery powered, one windup.

Somewhere deep down there’s a decent man in me, he just can’t be found.

It’s not to much fun to know yourself too well or think you do – everyone needs a little conceit to carry them through & past the falls.

Don’t throw stones at your neighbors if your own windows are glass.

Our lives are a sum total of the choices we have made.

How do you know what it’s like to be stupid if you’ve never been smart?

Did you know there’s a difference between being busy and being fruitful? Did you ever stop to think that just being busy – running around in circles all day but not accomplishing anything – is the same as wasting your time? It’s frustrating to expend so much energy and time and not have any fruit from your effort!

It’s normal for human beings to identify with their own separate self. The problem is that we get caught in that notion of ourself as a separate individual and caught in that individual self’s agenda.

Start your diet during a period of optimism and happiness.

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.

I don’t have all the answers.

People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.

‚Trilogy‘ was more of a claustrophobic body of work. Before it was released, I hadn’t left my city for 21 years, and I had never been on a plane, not once. I spent my entire life on one setting; that’s probably why pieces of the album feel like one long track, because that’s what my life felt like. It felt like one long song.

Leaders who fail to prune their pride will meet demise. That’s not a guess, it’s a guarantee. With pride, it’s not a matter of ‚if‘ we will fall, but ‚when.‘ There are no exceptions.

It is impossible to underrate human intelligence – beginning with one’s own.

We don’t laugh because we’re happy – we’re happy because we laugh.

There are always three speeches, for every one you actually gave. The one you practiced, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave.

We are rarely proud when we are alone.

I really have no interest in myself.

Nobody knows me.

I can’t tell anybody else how to run their life or their business, but I really believe I’ve got a good bead on myself.

Pride is pleasure arising from a man’s thinking too highly of himself.

The most positive men are the most credulous.

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

What you are comes to you.

The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.

I’m just wanting to make the proper breakfast and keep the house. That’s my passion. At the request of my kids, I’m taking cooking classes. As I go to sleep at night, I think, ‚Did I do a great job as a mom, or was that an average day?‘

Americans are far more remarkable than we give ourselves credit for. We’ve been so busy damning ourselves for years. We’ve done it all, and yet we don’t take credit for it.

My biggest error? Something that is to happen yet.

There’s a victory, and defeat; the first and best of victories, the lowest and worst of defeats which each man gains or sustains at the hands not of another, but of himself.

What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.

I like to recede away from classifications. You might say that indicates a fundamental lack of commitment. I suppose that’s true to some degree.

I invented my life by taking for granted that everything I did not like would have an opposite, which I would like.

A lot of times, people feel that if they forgive the person who hurt them, then they will continue to take advantage of them or not take responsibility for what they did wrong.

Never fret for an only son, the idea of failure will never occur to him.

For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‚If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?‘ And whenever the answer has been ‚No‘ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

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.

I never knew a more presumptuous person than myself. The fact that I say that shows that what I say is true.

I would like to be remembered as someone who did the best she could with the talent she had.

No parent is perfect; we all can look back and think of things we could’ve done to help our children be better prepared for adulthood. And sometimes it’s best to admit it to them and encourage them to learn from our mistakes.

We’re always looking over our shoulders, ‚what they will think, what the press will think, what will this one – am I making the right career move?‘ When you’re young you have to do all that to survive, I suppose.

We identify in our experience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us.

Self-pity in its early stage is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.

Be willing to have it so. Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

There is a need for aloneness, which I don’t think most people realise for an actor. It’s almost having certain kinds of secrets for yourself that you’ll let the whole world in on only for a moment, when you’re acting. But everybody is always tugging at you. They’d all like sort of a chunk of you.

I’m sure like everyone else I’m not always the happiest if I don’t do a good job in quali or the race or whatever, so I think beating myself up sometimes makes me work harder.

Things won’t get better dwelling on the past. Accept what has happened. Then move forward.

The most deeply personal of my works are the non-fiction works, the autobiographical works, because there, I’m talking about myself very directly.

I wake up every morning at nine and grab for the morning paper. Then I look at the obituary page. If my name is not on it, I get up.

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

For me, one of the toughest things about Valentine’s Day is that it gets geared up as the day to profess your love. See, T-E-S-T – that’s a bad word that doesn’t go with L-O-V-E.

Getting old is a fascination thing. The older you get, the older you want to get.

I am proud of having done what I’ve done. Very proud.

Questioning my spiritual life has always been germane to what I was writing. Always. It’s because I’m not quite an atheist and it worries me. There’s that little bit that holds on: ‚Well, I’m almost an atheist. Give me a couple of months.‘

With increasing age, dullness of mind and heart sets in.

When I wake up in the morning, I feel just like any other insecure 24-year-old girl.

I’ve always believed in God. I also think that’s the sort of thing that either comes as part of the equipment, the capacity to believe, or at some point in your life, when you’re in a position where you actually need help from a power greater than yourself, you simply make an agreement.

The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.

When I see myself as an old woman, I just think about being happy. And hopefully, I’ll still be fly.