Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.

Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.

I haven’t been faithful to my own advice in the past. I will in the future.

When I see a story, I ask: is this something I’d like to be in? Is this something I’d like to see? And if I’d like to see it, would I like to tell it?

When I was into my 30s, I became increasingly depressed by rejection letters. I had had the feeling that by the time I was 30, I would be established. But I was not at all. By the time of ‚Lives of Girls and Women,‘ I was into my 40s and I had become more thin-skinned.

I used to tell my husband that, if he could make me ‚understand‘ something, it would be clear to all the other people in the country.

The longer I live, the more I feel that true repose consists in ‚renouncing‘ one’s own self, by which I mean making up one’s mind to admit that there is no importance whatever in being ‚happy‘ or ‚unhappy‘ in the usual meaning of the words.

A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.

I feel like my music has become a lot of things. It’s hard to label the evolution, but I like there to be an evolution. I just like to paint with all different kinds of colors.

I love California, I practically grew up in Phoenix.

Some people take defeat and losses a certain way. You see how some fighters take losses.

I made my fair share of mistakes.

Consider, when you are enraged at any one, what you would probably think if he should die during the dispute.

Freedom is not given to us by anyone; we have to cultivate it ourselves. It is a daily practice… No one can prevent you from being aware of each step you take or each breath in and breath out.

No person is important enough to make me angry.

Although the circumstances of our lives may seem very disengaged, with me standing here as the First Lady of the United States of America and you just getting through school, I want you to know we have very much in common. For nothing in my life ever would have predicted that I would be standing here as the first African-American First Lady.

I never think about myself as an artist working in this time. I think about it in macro.

Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

I was so rude when I was a little girl.

Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

I don’t spend that much time being introspective, believe it or not. All I know is that I grew up not questioning God because that’s how you are. God was there like the birds and the wind.

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.

Some Christians feel guilty when they are doing something that isn’t ‚spiritual.‘ Somehow or another, they feel the need to hurry through the grocery store, dash through the house cleaning, and rush through all the daily aspects of life that seem irrelevant to their faith.

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

Forget the past.

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.

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

I had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss.

If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.

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.

I came up from a difficult background.

I’m half living my life between reality and fantasy at all times. It’s best not to ask questions and just enjoy.

All I can do is be me, whoever that is.

Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.

Avoid popularity if you would have peace.

There are a lot of things I never did, because I believe in watching those true Hollywood stories and I see how easy it is to lose track of your life.

For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.

I have had fun being who I became, so to speak.

I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.

If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.

There are no moral phenomena at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena.

When I was young, poverty was so common that we didn’t know it had a name.

I’ve been called a moron since I was about four. My father called me a moron. My grandfather said I was a moron. And a lot of times when I’m driving, I hear I’m a moron. I like being a moron.

One of the huge imbalances in life is the disparity between your daily existence, with its routines and habits, and the dream you have within yourself of some extraordinarily satisfying way of living.

I want to work; then, as my kids get older, I want to have adventures. I want to visit all their countries: learn and live inside all their cultures.

When you’re doing a film and the majority of the film is cast black, for me, it’s most important to get people to view those movies as just movies, as just good movies. At the end of the day, regardless of the color of the cast, we’re all doing the same thing in this business: trying to make a good film.

There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look.

A lot of people don’t like the road, but it’s as natural to me as breathing.

Some like to think that a keen appreciation of art can actually make us better people – more just, more moral, more sensitive, more understanding. Perhaps that is true – in certain rare, isolated cases.

Me, as a person, I grow. I’m like a chameleon. You know? That is a gift and a curse for me. But more so a gift, because it never puts me in a box.

I don’t know what drives me to succeed.

The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?

Remember, you can always stoop and pick up nothing.

Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.

People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore.

It’s getting harder to make decisions to just want to do something to work… I’m trying to find things that are extremely challenging or mean something to me deeply.

It is more fitting for a man to laugh at life than to lament over it.

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

Age wrinkles the body. Quitting wrinkles the soul.