My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.

When I look back over my life it’s almost as if there was a plan laid out for me – from the little girl who was so passionate about animals who longed to go to Africa and whose family couldn’t afford to put her through college. Everyone laughed at my dreams. I was supposed to be a secretary in Bournemouth.

If your inner life is not producing what you would like on the outside, don’t be discouraged… just be willing to change.

The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking.

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

When you realize who you live for, and who’s important to please, a lot of people will actually start living. I am never going to get caught up in that. I’m gonna look back on my life and say that I enjoyed it – and I lived it for me.

I had a period in my life where I decided that I would never be bored again and that, if I had any free time at all, I would make plans, and I would always be doing things. It actually was great for a year or so, but then I lost all of my friends.

People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.

Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.

I have practically no private life. I’m already used to this and ready for it. Yes, sometimes it is hard, but it is the choice I made.

Everything is political. I will never be a politician or even think political. Me just deal with life and nature. That is the greatest thing to me.

Understand this law and you will then know, beyond room for the slightest doubt, that you are constantly punishing yourself for every wrong you commit and rewarding yourself for every act of constructive conduct in which you indulge.

I’m afraid that people who know me as I usually am will discover I have another side, a better and finer side. I’m afraid they’ll mock me, think I’m ridiculous and sentimental and not take me seriously. I’m used to not being taken seriously, but only the ‚light-hearted‘ Anne is used to it and can put up with it; the ‚deeper‘ Anne is too weak.

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

Always remember that others may hate you but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.

You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.

Let everyone try and find that as a result of daily prayer he adds something new to his life, something with which nothing can be compared.

Achievement brings its own anticlimax.

Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour, content to dwell in decencies for ever.

Now I realize that from ’72 through to about ’76, I was the ultimate rock star. I couldn’t have been more rock star.

I’m trying to show everybody that I’m a girl, and I’m five foot four, and you can do anything you want, no matter your gender. It’s your world, too!

Have the humility to learn from those around you.

We all gonna die eventually from something or other, but don’t be a wimp. Put up a good fight.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.

Adopt responsibility for your own well-being, try to put your family together, try to serve your community, try to seek for eternal truth… That’s the sort of thing that can ground you in your life, enough so that you can withstand the difficulty of life.

Life’s too short to hang out with people who aren’t resourceful.

There is nothing permanent except change.

Why go through life if you’re not going to challenge yourself?

The formation of one’s character ought to be everyone’s chief aim.

My parents were dealing with evictions and repossessions and electricity getting shut off, and I just realized that I had to get it together.

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

I am not very good with relationships. With anyone. I can’t be locked up with anyone for too long.

Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil.

I’m not a natural performer or exhibitionist. When I was younger, I hated the focus, and it made me feel strange.

Reality has a way of intruding. Reality eventually intrudes on everything.

I am 55 years old now. It takes three years to write one book. I don’t know how many books I will be able to write before I die. It is like a countdown. So with each book I am praying – please let me live until I am finished.

They are resilient children, but they are children, and as much as they need help to understand the hard truths in life, they also need what we all need – protection and love.

There’s a deceptive sin that can keep us from walking in love: pride. It’s deceptive because when you have pride, you’re usually too proud to admit it. I know this because I used to have teachings on pride and they didn’t sell well.

In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.

The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.

Where would I be without baseball? Who am I without baseball?

Sometimes I think it would be easier to avoid old age, to die young, but then you’d never complete your life, would you? You’d never wholly know you.

Life is like a wheel. Sooner or later, it always come around to where you started again.

If you aren’t in the moment, you are either looking forward to uncertainty, or back to pain and regret.

To do the same thing over and over again is not only boredom: it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do.

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: ‚I’m with you kid. Let’s go.‘

While you’re saving your face, you’re losing your ass.

Thoughts are fine when you don’t confuse them with who you are, and then thoughts are not a problem. Thinking is a wonderful tool to create things in this world. It only becomes problematic and a source of suffering when you confuse thinking with who you are.

The question of whether or not there is a God or truth or reality or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by books, by priests, philosopher’s or saviours. Nobody and nothing can answer the question but you yourself, and that is why you must know yourself – Immaturity lies only in total ignorance of self.

People who don’t like my work say that the connections seem too arbitrary. But that’s how life is.

You are not a problem that needs solving.

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.

Of all acts of man repentance is the most divine. The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none.

I am happy and I’m single.

I draw pleasure in governance, in doing new things and bringing people together. That pleasure is all I need from life.

Never do things others can do and will do if there are things others cannot do or will not do.

It no longer bothers me that I may be constantly searching for father figures; by this time, I have found several and dearly enjoyed knowing them all.

The truth is, somebody is always talking about you, so you have to let it go… if it’s not a part of your God-given destiny.

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