Individuals need to be willing to face truth about their attitudes, behaviors, even what we want out of life.

The closest I ever came to getting married was just before I started singing. In fact, my first record saved my neck.

I’m sure I’ve changed my mind about something. Inevitably, when we grow up – as we get more experience and wiser. Well, I’ve changed my mind about some food that I didn’t like when I was young.

I’ve learned a lot since I was a new mother. My approach to struggle and shame now is to talk to yourself like you’d talk to someone you love and reach out to tell your story.

Even though I was very shy, I found I could get onstage if I had a new identity.

Start wide, expand further, and never look back.

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

I don’t make people bend over backwards, and I don’t like that in people. I am definitely no diva.

When I was a youngster I lived with different families. I nearly always felt closer to the man of the house. Maybe because I always dreamed of having a father of my own.

I gather from motivation around me – from a lot of personalities who have done well in their respective fields.

Take time to gather up the past so that you will be able to draw from your experience and invest them in the future.

For an author, the nice characters aren’t much fun. What you want are the screwed up characters. You know, the characters that are constantly wondering if what they are doing is the right thing, characters that are not only screwed up but are self-tapping screws. They’re doing it for themselves.

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.

I knew that I was ‚interesting‘ at 18 because I was aware that I could get away with doing things on stage.

When I write about a 15-year old, I jump, I return to the days when I was that age. It’s like a time machine. I can remember everything. I can feel the wind. I can smell the air. Very actually. Very vividly.

Absolutely not. I have no problem with commitment. In fact, I love having someone in my life.

Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity.

At 50, I began to know who I was. It was like waking up to myself.

I never said I was the best in anything. I never said I’m an icon. The world decides all of that.

A shady business never yields a sunny life.

I can’t keep somebody from being a star, and I can’t make somebody a star, and nobody can.

There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.

Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.

We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man’s features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.

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

Through my films I’m eventually trying to one day tell the truth. I don’t know if I’m ever going to get there, but I’m slowly letting pieces of myself out there and then maybe by the time I’m 85, I’ll look back and say, ‚All right, that about sums it up.‘

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.

What I have in common with the character in ‚Truman‘ is this incredible need to please people. I feel like I want to take care of everyone and I also feel this terrible guilt if I am unable to. And I have felt this way ever since all this success started.

Believe me, I’m much easier to be around when we win than when we lose.

I never thought of losing, but now that it‘ s happened, the only thing is to do it right. That’s my obligation to all the people who believe in me. We all have to take defeats in life.

I thank God I’m in a position where I can pick and choose – there are some roles I don’t play.

Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.

Get mad, then get over it.

I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame.

If you start to think of your physical and moral condition, you usually find that you are sick.

The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness.

The best advice comes from people who don’t give advice.

I was inspired to spend an entire year – my 65th year – reading, researching, and meditating on Lao-tzu’s messages, practicing them and ultimately writing down these insights as I felt Lao-tzu wanted us to know them.

It’s very hard to live with yourself if you don’t stick with your moral code.

I went through a lot of battles in high school.

I don’t see the point of doing an interview unless you’re going to share the things you learn in life and the mistakes you make. So to admit that I’m extremely human and have done some dark things I don’t think makes me unusual or unusually dark. I think it actually is the right thing to do, and I’d like to think it’s the nice thing to do.

To meditate means to go home to yourself. Then you know how to take care of the things that are happening inside you, and you know how to take care of the things that happen around you.

Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.

It’s easy to become very self-critical when you’re an actor. Then you get critiqued by the critics. Whether you agree with them or not, people are passing judgment on you.

Vanity can create a very cruel space for you if you don’t know how to manage it.

I periodically realize every few years that the only person whose taste I really trust is me.

The man with insight enough to admit his limitations comes nearest to perfection.

You have to just make the choices you make in life. I made the choices I made because I believed they were right for me.

First, I’m trying to prove to myself that I’m a person. Then maybe I’ll convince myself that I’m an actress.

I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up – they have no holidays.

When people get taken over by the ego to such an extent, there is nothing else in their mind except the ego. They can no longer feel or sense their humanity – what they share with other human beings, or even with other life forms on the planet. They are so identified with concepts in their minds that other human beings become concepts as well.

This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say.

You say that you are my judge; I do not know if you are; but take good heed not to judge me ill, because you would put yourself in great peril.

Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience.

So when these people sell out, even though they get fabulously rich, they’re gypping themselves out of one of the potentially most rewarding experiences of their unfolding lives. Without it, they may never know their values or how to keep their newfound wealth in perspective.

The question of sexual dominance can exist only in the nightmare of that soul which has armed itself, totally, against the possibility of the changing motion of conquest and surrender, which is love.

Once I realized that right thinking is vital to victorious living, I got more serious about thinking about what I was thinking about, and choosing my thoughts carefully.

Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it… that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear.

Not everyone loves me, but I have to be okay no matter what they think about me.

‚Perfection‘ to me is, I walk away from a situation and say, ‚I did everything I could do right there. There was nothing more that I could do.‘ I was a hundred percent, like the meter was at the top. There was nothing else I could have done. You know? Like, I worked as hard as I possibly could have. That’s perfection.

Some people would like me to be round again.