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.

I have learned to know God. I have recast my social belief… All my admirers are married; most of my friends are dead; and I stand with all the world before me, where to choose a path to make in it.

In a universe that’s an intelligent system with a divine creative force supporting it, there simply can be no accidents. As tough as it is to acknowledge, you had to go through what you went through in order to get to where you are today, and the evidence is that you did.

I never knew a more presumptuous person than myself. The fact that I say that shows that what I say is true.

What interests me in life is curiosity, challenges, the good fight with its victories and defeats.

In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.

Everything I read about hitting a midlife crisis was true. I had such a struggle letting go of youthful things and learning how to exist and have enthusiasm while settling into the comfort of an older age.

I’m crazy, but I’m not too crazy.

What comes out when life squeezes you? When someone hurts or offends you? If anger, pain and fear come out of you, it’s because that’s what’s inside.

I got my own back.

I used to have insecurity about my finances, then I announced that I had debt, and now I don’t have any insecurities.

I have a personal ambition to live my life honestly and honor the true love that I’ve had and also the people I’ve had around me.

The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.

We rarely confide in those who are better than we are.

Because my dad abused me, I was determined to never let a man tell me what to do. God clearly showed me that I needed to be a submissive wife if I wanted to be effective in ministry. The truth is, if we don’t learn to submit to authority, we won’t ever learn to submit to God.

Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

If you’re going to be a winner in life, you have to constantly go beyond your best.

As human beings, we are all not conducting just one narrative but many narratives all at the same time.

Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.

Everything negative – pressure, challenges – is all an opportunity for me to rise.

You don’t have the same mentality as you did five years ago – even one year. People are always changing, and I believe that everyone deserves the space to change and for people to recognize their change.

If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride.

On one occasion, I accompanied my father to Pinares de Mayari. I was eight or nine years old. How he enjoyed talking when he left the house in Biran! There he was the proprietor of the land where sugar cane, pasture, and other agricultural crops were planted.

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.

As long as I’m learning something, I figure I’m OK – it’s a decent day.

There’s people constantly asking you for something on set, so the multi-tasking of motherhood transfers very well to being a director. And I think you’re compassionate.

Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.

If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?

Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity.

I grew up as this very carefree, happy kid then things turned darker for me. Maybe it was because I saw that the world wasn’t as happy a place as I had hoped it would be for me.

No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.

When I was making the early stuff, I never expected it to be so big. I was in my own kind of bubble. I never wanted to tour; I just wanted to create music and make a diary I could put out into the world. And sometimes, I became the characters.

I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.

I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.

I always try to be myself. Ever since I was an introverted kid, I’d get on stage and be able to break out of my shell.

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

I was born with a great gift, and sometimes with that comes a destructive streak.

The older I get, the better I understand that every day is a gift.

Vanity is the healthiest thing in life.

When I was growing up, I wasn’t an extrovert. If anything, I was an introverted kid and a very average pupil at school. I was very quiet.

I don’t think I am evangelical in my work.

In fairy tales the bad guy is very easy to spot. The bad guy is always wearing a black cape so you always know who he is.

I became a people-watcher when I lost all my friends when I was 12.

Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.

I once wanted to prove myself by being a great actress. Now I want to prove that I’m a person. Then maybe I’ll be a great actress.

People make jokes about my bosoms, why don’t they look underneath the breasts at the heart? It’s obvious I’ve got big ones and if people want to assume they’re not mine, then let them.

When you are offended at any man’s fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger.

My favorite thing in life is writing about life, specifically the parts of life concerning love. Because, as far as I’m concerned, love is absolutely everything.

A reader can never tell if it’s a real thimble or an imaginary thimble, because by the time you’re reading it, they’re the same. It’s a thimble. It’s in the book.

Men must know their limitations.

Fear clogs; faith liberates.

We cannot learn men from books.

Growing old has been the greatest surprise of my life.

Part of me suspects that I’m a loser, and the other part of me thinks I’m God Almighty.

I listen to my old records and I think, ‚How did I ever get on the radio?‘

I now possess the tools as a producer and a songwriter to really just go out and make smashes all day long. I could make an album full of smash records that got pop appeal. But my heart is in hip-hop. My heart is in telling stories. And it’s like therapy for me.

Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child.

Me not finishing school – in my head, I still have this insecurity when I’m talking to someone educated.

Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one’s potential.

People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong. Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?