Key is never be afraid of being yourself. Never!

I’m crazy, but I’m not too crazy.

What starts the process, really, are laughs and slights and snubs when you are a kid. If your anger is deep enough and strong enough, you learn that you can change those attitudes by excellence, personal gut performance.

Honestly, I could care less about other people’s opinions about me.

I never fall in love.

Women, like men, should try to do the impossible. And when they fail, their failure should be a challenge to others.

If you deny people their own voice, you’ll have no idea of who they were.

The body is meant to be seen, not all covered up.

A great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.

Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is impossible to foresee this, it is impossible to be warned.

I’m a writer, and I will write what I want to write.

Complaining is dangerous business. It can damage or even destroy your relationship with God, your relationships with other people, and even with your relationship with yourself.

I am getting to the point where the only love worth being in is the love worth singing about.

My weaknesses have always been food and men – in that order.

It’s hard to practice compassion when we’re struggling with our authenticity or when our own worthiness is off-balance.

You simply have to accept that your demons are a part of you.

Though she be but little, she is fierce.

You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.

If some years were added to my life, I would give fifty to the study of the Yi, and then I might come to be without great faults.

Why is it you always meet people when you look your worst?

A smart girl leaves before she is left.

Those who believe that they are exclusively in the right are generally those who achieve something.

Government can provide opportunity. But opportunity means nothing unless people are prepared to seize it.

I think that as you grow up, as you get older, we can’t get bitter, we can’t get jaded.

Everybody wants to be me. What can I say?

We do not need the empire to give us anything.

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

We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.

You have people come into your life shockingly and surprisingly. You have losses that you never thought you’d experience. You have rejection and you have learn how to deal with that and how to get up the next day and go on with it.

Everything deep is also simple and can be reproduced simply as long as its reference to the whole truth is maintained. But what matters is not what is witty but what is true.

In my later years, I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I’ve worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.

You start to become successful, and everybody starts to drive your money train to the bank, and they’re not thinking anymore about what you want as an artist or if any of that even matters to you. It genuinely upsets people in my life that I don’t care about money, and that’s not my problem.

I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough in me to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.

There are 309 million people out there that are trying to improve their lot in life. And we’ve got a system that allows them to do it.

I always wonder when it was that I was embraced.

A black person grows up in this country – and in many places – knowing that racism will be as familiar as salt to the tongue. Also, it can be as dangerous as too much salt. I think that you must struggle for betterment for yourself and for everyone.

Anger cannot be dishonest.

People have so many hang-ups about how other people live their lives. People always want to keep you in a little box, or they need to label you and fix you in time and location.

Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.

Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power.

I still consider myself a little, fat kid from Hawaii.

You can never really live anyone else’s life, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you’ve become yourself.

The thing about the truth is, not a lot of people can handle it.

Moral authority is never retained by any attempt to hold on to it. It comes without seeking and is retained without effort.

If you have a particular faith or religion, that is good. But you can survive without it.

Nothing new here, except my marrying, which to me is a matter of profound wonder.

Don’t compare yourself with other people; compare yourself with who you were yesterday.

I don’t think I’m bad for people. If I did think I was bad for people, I would go back to driving a truck, and I really mean this.

Even the securest financial plan and the finest health coverage aren’t enough to hold us steady when the challenges come… We need something more, something deeper and unshakeable, something that will see us through life’s hard times.

Nothing builds self-esteem and self-confidence like accomplishment.

I believe that anyone can conquer fear by doing the things he fears to do, provided he keeps doing them until he gets a record of successful experience behind him.

The drama and the trauma of the relationship you have when you’re 16 can mirror the one you have when you’re 26. Life repeats itself.

You see, I am trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across – not to just depict life – or criticize it – but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me, you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful.

Usually, people have a tendency to be caught in the worries concerning the future or in the regret concerning the past. There is some kind of energy that is pushing them to run, and they are not able to establish themselves in the present moment.

I am grateful to be a woman. I must have done something great in another life.

I don’t know how to live good. I only know how to suffer.

People have this capacity within them to set the world straight.

Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

If the other person injures you, you may forget the injury; but if you injure him you will always remember.

You don’t look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you.

I enjoy competition. I enjoy challenges. If a challenge is in front of me and it appeals to me, I will go ahead and conquer it.