I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized, and I still had a daughter who I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

I’m not going to stop having problems.

It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.

I feel like people can relate to me because we all go through wins and roadblocks and passion and pain, and it’s a vibe.

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.

He who knows himself is enlightened.

I fear that many a man’s good resolutions only need the ordinary fire of daily life to make them melt away. So, too, with fine professions and the boastings of perfection which abound in this age of shams.

My work is the only ground I’ve ever had to stand on. To put it bluntly, I seem to have a whole superstructure with no foundation, but I’m working on the foundation.

I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has had to overcome while trying to succeed.

The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others.

Every once in a while, I get mad. ‚The Lorax‘ came out of my being angry. The ecology books I’d read were dull… In ‚The Lorax,‘ I was out to attack what I think are evil things and let the chips fall where they might.

Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.

I guess you could say I devoted myself so strongly to my music that for awhile I forgot about my family. But I only get one set of parents, and I think I forgot about that for a little while.

If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can smile, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace.

Freedom conceives that the mind and spirit of man can be free only if he be free to pattern his own life, to develop his own talents, free to earn, to spend, to save, to acquire property as the security of his old age and his family.

To all the positions, I just bring the determination to win. Me being an unselfish player, I think that can carry on to my teammates. When you have one of the best players on the court being unselfish, I think that transfers to the other players.

Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

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.

The world’s biggest power is the youth and beauty of a woman.

There is nothing impossible to him who will try.

I know the blessing of having a dad who played 16 years in the league. That experience, and seeing him as an example, let me know that it’s possible. It’s not easy, but it’s possible.

I’ve never had a divorce, but I’ve seen so many of my friends, my sister, my family go through that stuff, so I try to write for the people that can’t write about it. I take on their sorrow, so I’m able to kind of express it, or their joy.

Courage is grace under pressure.

I grew up in a funny way.

It’s none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.

My interest in life comes from setting myself huge, apparently unachievable challenges and trying to rise above them.

You can’t go backward in life.

I made bad decisions. I’m not denying that I made bad decisions.

To take a few nouns, and a few pronouns, and adverbs and adjectives, and put them together, ball them up, and throw them against the wall to make them bounce. That’s what Norman Mailer did. That’s what James Baldwin did, and Joan Didion did, and that’s what I do – that’s what I mean to do.

The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.

I’m super self-critical, which I think is good, because then I get exactly what I want. I’m critical of other people, too – I try not to be, though.

A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings, and learn how by his own thought to derive benefit from his illnesses.

If I wished to do something, even if I couldn’t find anyone who wanted to make the effort with me, I would go out solo climbing. I did find solo climbing very challenging and a little frightening. You knew that you were completely on your own, and you had to overcome all the problems and possible dangers.

I’m totally myself.

I do believe in self-help.

Faith activates God – Fear activates the Enemy.

You just wait. I’m going to be the biggest Chinese Star in the world.

If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

It is amazing how a new child can refocus one’s direction seconds after its birth.

In every walk of life, you must have leaders. An education in the spiritual world, in the labor field, in the agricultural field, we must have leaders.

Age wrinkles the body. Quitting wrinkles the soul.

We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dearly bought experience.

If some years were added to my life, I would give fifty to the study of the Yi, and then I might come to be without great faults.

Family and friendships are two of the greatest facilitators of happiness.

Before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.

People will try to bring you down, but you gotta go up.

If you can’t make it good, at least make it look good.

Loving someone liberates the lover as well as the beloved. And that kind of love comes with age.

The worst thing that happens to you may be the best thing for you if you don’t let it get the best of you.

As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.

Sometimes people make it seem like you have to have certain prerequisites or a crazy life story in order to be successful in this world. But the truth is you really don’t.

Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.

All wrong-doing arises because of mind. If mind is transformed can wrong-doing remain?

I’m not a centerfold.

I will seize fate by the throat; it shall certainly never wholly overcome me.

If you realize all the time what’s kind of wonderful – that is, if we expand our experience into wilder and wilder regions of experience – every once in a while, we have these integrations when everything’s pulled together into a unification, in which it turns out to be simpler than it looked before.

What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy.

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.

Do not be in a hurry to succeed. What would you have to live for afterwards? Better make the horizon your goal; it will always be ahead of you.

I don’t know what can be so dangerous about giving people hope. Causing people to have better relationships. I’m not leading them to some false God or something like that.