It’s nice to be included in people’s fantasies but you also like to be accepted for your own sake.

Take me seriously. Take me and my role seriously. Take my talent seriously.

The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.

Glam really did plant seeds for a new identity. I think a lot of kids needed that – that sense of reinvention. Kids learned that however crazy you may think it is, there is a place for what you want to do and who you want to be.

When you get to a place where you understand that love and belonging, your worthiness, is a birthright and not something you have to earn, anything is possible.

When I was fourteen and first started going out, I always wanted to be the opposite of everyone else. So I would go to the club in a polo T-shirt and pants and sneakers and a hat on backward, just so I would not be dressed like other girls.

Rather be dead than cool.

Timidity makes a person modest. It makes him or her say, ‚I’m not worthy of being written up in the record of deeds in heaven or on earth.‘ Timidity keeps people from their good. They are afraid to say, ‚Yes, I deserve it.‘

You can’t stop everything from happening. But we’ve gotten to a point where we’re certainly trying. If a car doesn’t have four hundred air bags in it, then it’s no good.

If proud Americans can be who they are and boldly stand at the altar with who they love then surely, surely we can give everyone in this country a fair chance at that great American Dream.

There isn’t anybody that looks like me without clothes on.

For me, the opposite of scarcity is not abundance. It’s enough. I’m enough. My kids are enough.

You don’t have to be somebody different to be important. You’re important in your own right.

I would not like to be the only woman on the court.

My body is like breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I don’t think about it, I just have it.

If anything, we should feel sorry for the people who want us to feel bad about ourselves, because they are the ones struggling for approval. In middle school, bullies tortured other kids because they thought it would make people like them more.

We cannot fashion our children after our desires, we must have them and love them as God has given them to us.

We human beings are strange creatures and still reserve the right to think for ourselves.

I don’t really focus on these things – on what tags are given to me or what people think of me off the field – stuff like that. My main focus is always to do well on the field for the Indian cricket team. When people say good things about me off the field, I am more than happy to accept them.

God didn’t make a mistake when He made you. You need to see yourself as God sees you.

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.

That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.

The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.

The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you – black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight.

What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.

I worked with someone who told me they’d never like me. But for some reason, I just felt like I needed her approval. So I started changing myself to please her. It made me stop being social and friendly. I was so unhappy.

The Lord can give, and the Lord can take away. I might be herding sheep next year.

You have to give others the opportunity to love who you love. If they don’t accept it, it’s their loss.

The person who seeks all their applause from outside has their happiness in another’s keeping .

We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can’t cope with is therefore your own problem.

Allow children to be happy in their own way, for what better way will they find?

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

I don’t do drugs. I am drugs.

People should make up their own mind about what they think of me.

I don’t like to give advice. I like to give people information because everyone’s life is different, and everyone’s journey is different.

The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself.

As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.

When you have peace in yourself and accept, then you are calm enough to do something, but if you are carried by despair, there is no hope.

Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything.

I trust my taste. I trust it completely and I always have done, and I’ve always thought it isn’t that different from everybody else’s.

I hope that what you take away from my album is not just the music – which I did want to be fun, and I did want it to be about individuality, but please also take away from it that there’s no dream that’s too big.

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.

Everything that happens happens as it should, and if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so.

I specifically did not read other First Ladies‘ books, because I didn’t want to be influenced by how they defined the role. I knew that I would have to find this role – very uniquely and specifically to me and who I was.

But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be.

The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.

All ways of living can be sanctified, and for each individual, the ideal way is that to which our Lord leads him through the natural development of his tastes and the pressure of circumstances.

There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.

You should do what other people do, unless you have a very good reason not to.

I’m not somebody that thinks about destiny and fate, but I don’t walk away from it when something unfolds.

I’m afraid that everything will get homogenized and be the same.

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

On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down .

I am not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.

If we accept being talked to any kind of a way, then we are telling ourselves we are not quite worth the best. And if we have the effrontery to talk to anybody with less than courtesy, we tell ourselves and the world we are not very intelligent.

You can’t do something forever.

To love someone means to see him as God intended him.

Yes, Mother. I can see you are flawed. You have not hidden it. That is your greatest gift to me.

A musician should only sound like what they do, and no two musicians sound the same. It’s an individual-feel thing, you know?

The poor are discussed as this homogeneous mash, like porridge. The idea that they might be individuals, and be where they are for very different, diverse reasons, again seems to escape some people.