I’m trying to show everybody that I’m a girl, and I’m five foot four, and you can do anything you want, no matter your gender. It’s your world, too!

Is fear preventing you from taking action? Acknowledge the fear, watch it, take your attention into it, be fully present with it. Doing so cuts the link between the fear and your thinking. Don’t let the fear rise up into your mind. Use the power of the Now. Fear cannot prevail against it.

The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.

Well, I’m in my 60s now. I finally look it, I think. People until I was 60 would always say they thought I looked younger, which I think, without flattering myself, I did, but I think I certainly have, as George Orwell says people do after a certain age, the face they deserve.

Why do I like to write short stories? Well, I certainly didn’t intend to. I was going to write a novel. And still! I still come up with ideas for novels. And I even start novels. But something happens to them. They break up. I look at what I really want to do with the material, and it never turns out to be a novel.

In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.

Women should be obscene and not heard.

I like to work with artists from around the world. There are so many new inspiring filmmakers.

Searching for music is like searching for God. They’re very similar. There’s an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unseeable, the unspeakable, all those things, comes into being a composer and to writing music and to searching for notes and pieces of musical information that don’t exist.

The stronger the participation of the female characters, the better the movie. They knew that in the old days, when women stars were equally as important as men.

Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.

I think it is perfectly natural for any artist to admire intensely and love a young man. It is an incident in the life of almost every artist.

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You’re on your own, and you know what you know. And you are the guy who’ll decide where to go.

No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.

Sometimes it’s a form of love just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and still be fascinated by their presence.

To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.

Dreams are the touchstones of our character.

Ambition has one heel nailed in well, though she stretch her fingers to touch the heavens.

The influence of ‚Hidden Fortress‘ comes up a lot because it was printed in a book once. The truth is, the only thing I was inspired by was the fact that it’s told from the point of view of two peasants, who get mixed up with a samurai and princess and a lot of very high-level people.

Over the holidays, and even during filming, I realized that I actually like my body, even if it’s not perfect according to the book. I just feel sexy. For the first time, I don’t want to get rid of the curves. I just want to tone it up. My body is comfortable, and it’s not unhealthy, so I’m going to rock with it.

I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels.

I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by those who were inspired. I study the Bible daily.

Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.

For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him he must regard himself as greater than he is.

I think women want to take care of themselves, and I think having a voice in how that is done is very important.

Within us there is someone who knows everything, wills everything, does everything better than we ourselves.

One of the things you do when you make a piece of art is you try to make the world you’d rather be in.

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.

Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.

When you believe in a thing, believe in it all the way, implicitly and unquestionable.

I’m not going to change the world. You’re not going to change the world. But we can help – we can all help.

I certainly respect the belief of the Hobby Lobby owners. On the other hand, they have no constitutional right to foist that belief on the hundreds and hundreds of women who work for them who don’t share that belief.

It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent.

Foreignness is all around. Only in the heart of the heart of the country, namely the heart of the United States, can you avoid such a thing. In the center of an empire, you can think of your experience as universal. Outside the empire or on the fringes of the empire, you cannot.

When I was growing up, there were no women in orchestras. Auditioners thought they could tell the difference between a woman playing and a man. Some intelligent person devised a simple solution: Drop a curtain between the auditioners and the people trying out. And, lo and behold, women began to get jobs in symphony orchestras.

In the duel of sex woman fights from a dreadnought and man from an open raft.

Never was it given to mortal man – To lie so boldly as we women can.

We don’t need to share the same opinions as others, but we need to be respectful.

Writing and cafes are strongly linked in my brain.

If there is only one thing in my life that I am proud of, it’s that I’ve never been a kept woman.

I want the world to see my body.

Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.

The idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all.

Just because something didn’t work out your way, or somebody disappointed you, that does not change who you are.

The best preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today.

Today, Negroes play on every big league club and in every minor league. With millions of other Negroes in other walks of life, we are willing to stand up and be counted for what we believe in. In baseball or out, we are no longer willing to wait until Judgment Day for equality – we want it here on earth as well as in Heaven.

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.

He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.

I’m not in control of my muse. My muse does all the work.

Wisdom begins in wonder.

All of my writing is God-given.

I didn’t know any gay people in my childhood.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.

Nobody has ever convinced me that race is real.

Imagination decides everything.

What someone else does or doesn’t do has no effect on me and what I do.

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

We all have our imperfections. But I’m human, and you know, it’s important to concentrate on other qualities besides outer beauty.

I guess I don’t so much mind being old, as I mind being fat and old.

You do things when the opportunities come along. I’ve had periods in my life when I’ve had a bundle of ideas come along, and I’ve had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I’ll do something. If not, I won’t do a damn thing.

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.