I was a grade B housewife, maybe a B minus. But when I got time to write, I would be unable to finish a sentence. I had anxiety attacks. Partly it was a way of personifying the situation because I couldn’t breathe. I was surrounded by people and by duties. I was a housewife and the children’s mother, and I was judged on how I performed those roles.

I don’t think I am evangelical in my work.

I wanted to write when I was young, but people said it was impossible. Then my parents locked me in a mental institution – they said I was crazy and would never make a living from writing.

I believe that the greatest gift you can give your family and the world is a healthy you.

You can’t be happy by doing something groovy.

For a long time, I had the idea that I would do a certain amount of work the best I could, and then I would reach a comfort zone, and I wouldn’t be pushed to write more. I would become a different person. It’s a surprise to me that this hasn’t happened. Your body ages, but your mind is the same.

Whenever I write a novel, I have a strong sense that I am doing something I was unable to do before. With each new work, I move up a step and discover something new inside me.

I’m not a very creative person, you know? I’m not really an art person. I’m not a great reader or writer or artist or musician.

I’ve written some great things. That’s a gift, but there’s consequences. Yeah, you get this great work, but you suffer. You really, really suffer.

If you try and work out at 4:30 in the afternoon, how many people are going to chip away at that time? Your boss, your job, your work, your family, your other obligations that you might have. At 4:30 in the morning, all those people are asleep, so you can do whatever you want.

Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl.

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 go to work on your goals, your goals will go to work on you. If you go to work on your plan, your plan will go to work on you. Whatever good things we build end up building us.

I knew I wanted to do something creative. I didn’t think I’d have the luxury of doing something like that, because I didn’t know anyone who had pursued anything they really adored, but I had dreams for singing or writing.

Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.

Van Gogh never made a penny in his entire lifetime. He painted because it was his soul, his excitement. It was what aligned him with his Source of being. It’s the same with me and writing.

For what Harley Street specialist has time to understand the body, let alone the mind or both in combination, when he is a slave to thirteen thousand a year?

You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.

Like a pianist runs her fingers over the keys, I’ll search my mind for what to say. Now, the poem may want you to write it. And then sometimes you see a situation and think, ‚I’d like to write about that.‘ Those are two different ways of being approached by a poem, or approaching a poem.

You cannot have a positive life and a negative mind.

My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.

When a father puts in long hours at work, he’s praised for being dedicated and ambitious. But when a mother stays late at the office, she’s sometimes accused of being selfish, neglecting her kids.

Many of my fans often tell me that they listen to my songs to get through things. And therefore, obviously, I hope that they can picture being in a place where things are better… I hope my songs can bring people to a calm place.

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.

People have so much going on in their heads. I’m like, If you could write a song, you’d feel so much better!

Stand-up is hard. Or to keep it at a certain level is hard: I have no writers but me.

When you stop caring what people think, you lose your capacity for connection. When you’re defined by it, you lose our capacity for vulnerability.

Well, there are some things that I just can’t get out of my head, and they start to annoy me after a while. Sometimes they’re of my own creation, as well – and they’re just as annoying. It’s not only other people’s ear worms that bug me, it’s my own, as well.

I feel exhausted if I teach too long.

I think sometimes the best training is to rest.

It’s so tedious writing cookbooks or writing the recipes because I’ve never been much of a measurer. But to write a book, you have to measure everything.

The question is not, ‚Do you have a problem?‘ The question is, ‚Does the problem have you?‘

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.

The thing about fantasy – there are certain things you just don’t do in fantasy.

A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.

Don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better.

I’m not very articulate.

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.

Choosing to be positive and having a grateful attitude is going to determine how you’re going to live your life.

Kids who have an understanding of how and why their feelings are what they are are much more likely to talk to us about what’s happening, and they have better skills to work it out.

I do suffer from depression, I suppose. Which isn’t that unusual. You know, a lot of people do.

The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind.

I believe the first test of a truly great man is in his humility.

I’m not afraid to make mistakes.

Dressing up is a bore. At a certain age, you decorate yourself to attract the opposite sex, and at a certain age, I did that. But I’m past that age.

I think a role model is a mentor – someone you see on a daily basis, and you learn from them.

What is the use of writing plays, what is the use of writing anything, if there is not a will which finally moulds chaos itself into a race of gods.

Sometimes I write stuff that strangely predicts what’s going to happen in my life.

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.

I just want people to be the best thems and live the happiest lives possible.

If I’d found out that Norman Mailer liked me. I’d have killed myself.

The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.

I like to feel blonde all over.

Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.

No one has a right to consume happiness without producing it.

I didn’t want to be a writer, but I became one. And now I have many readers, in many countries. I think that’s a miracle. So I think I have to be humble regarding this ability. I’m proud of it and I enjoy it, and it is strange to say it this way, but I respect it.

I think you get most of the most interesting work done in fields where people don’t think they’re doing art but are merely practicing a craft and working as good craftsmen. Being literate as a writer is good craft, is knowing your job, is knowing how to use your tools properly and not to damage the tools as you use them.

If you’re put on a pedestal, you’re supposed to behave yourself like a pedestal type of person. Pedestals actually have a limited circumference. Not much room to move around.

If you’re doing your best, you won’t have any time to worry about failure.

If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure – the relationship so secret and private compared with relations with men. Why not write about it truthfully?