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

My life has been very full.

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.

I don’t see the point of doing an interview unless you’re going to share the things you learn in life and the mistakes you make. So to admit that I’m extremely human and have done some dark things I don’t think makes me unusual or unusually dark. I think it actually is the right thing to do, and I’d like to think it’s the nice thing to do.

The left paw has done me well over the years. I’m not a scientist, I’m a martial artist.

The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it: so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it.

Leadership is a choice, not a position.

I’m fat, but I’m thin inside… there’s a thin man inside every fat man.

I’ve arrived at the place if I’m not taking a career risk, I’m not happy. If I’m scared, then I know I’m being challenged.

Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.

Our passions are like convulsion fits, which, though they make us stronger for a time, leave us the weaker ever after.

The worst thing one can do is not to try, to be aware of what one wants and not give in to it, to spend years in silent hurt wondering if something could have materialized – never knowing.

Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.

When a person is going through hell, and she encounters someone who went through hellish hell and survived, then she can say, ‚Mine is not so bad as all that. She came through, and so can I.‘

I’ve always kinda been a little outcast myself, a little oddball, doin‘ my thing, my own way. And it’s been hard for me to, to be accepted, certainly in the early years of my life.

How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers names.

Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.

You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.

What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy.

In past generations, people would try to play younger than they really are. My trick is, I don’t try to play younger than I really am.

It’s always appealing to play a character that has to overcome himself as well as an obstacle. It makes the drama so much deeper.

Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly.

You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.

It is in self-limitation that a master first shows himself.

The world is put back by the death of every one who has to sacrifice the development of his or her peculiar gifts to conventionality.

Precepts or maxims are of great weight; and a few useful ones on hand do more to produce a happy life than the volumes we can’t find.

To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.

You get one life. I’m going to embrace mine.

Truthfully, without over-egging it, as I often do, the library and journalism, those things made me who I am.

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.

I don’t even know how to speak up for myself, because I don’t really have a father who would give me the confidence or advice. And if you’re always the new kid, you never get a chance to adapt, so your confidence is just zilch.

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.

No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place.

I always knew from that moment, from the time I found myself at home in that little segregated library in the South, all the way up until I walked up the steps of the New York City library, I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, I’ll be OK. It really helped me as a child, and that never left me.

Hollywood is not suited for me, and I am not suited for it.

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.

Choose people who lift you up.

If a person doesn’t change, there’s something really wrong with him.

Arthur Miller wouldn’t have married me if I had been nothing but a dumb blonde.

We need an adult in the White House. When making life-or-death, war-or-peace decisions, a president can’t just pop off or lash out irrationally.

I grew up where, when a door closed, a window didn’t open. The only thing I had was cracks. I’d do everything to get through those cracks – scratch, claw, bite, push, bleed. Now the opportunity is here. The door is wide open, and it’s as big as a garage.

The issues a president faces are not black and white, and cannot be boiled down into 140 characters. Because when you have the nuclear codes at your fingertips and the military at your command, you can’t make snap decisions. You can’t have a thin skin or the tendency to lash out.

Serious illness doesn’t bother me for long because I am too inhospitable a host.

Once elected, the Pope is by virtue of the promise of Jesus to Peter, the Pope is preserved from the possibility of error. God would change any spend thrift politician into a responsible Pope.

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.

People say you have to hit rock bottom, and, I can tell you, almost dying is as rock bottom as it gets.

As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend.

‚Perfection‘ to me is, I walk away from a situation and say, ‚I did everything I could do right there. There was nothing more that I could do.‘ I was a hundred percent, like the meter was at the top. There was nothing else I could have done. You know? Like, I worked as hard as I possibly could have. That’s perfection.

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

When it all got taken away, I was becoming a young man. So I had to sacrifice to leave my family… Sleeping in my car, getting an apartment for a month and getting evicted the next month. Staying in the $25, $50 hotels.

I’m just like you – I want to be a good human being. I’m doing my best, and I’m working at it. And I’m trying to be a Christian. I’m always amazed when people walk up to me and say, ‚I’m a Christian.‘ I always think, ‚Already? You’ve already got it?‘ I’m working at it. And at my age, I’ll still be working at it at 96.

I let the American people down.

To enjoy freedom we have to control ourselves.

All my adult life people have been helping me.

I’ve had a few semi-toxic relationships, but it’s not what I look for when I’m seeing someone.

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 don’t want to make money, I just want to be wonderful.

When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion.

The greatest magnifying glasses in the world are a man’s own eyes when they look upon his own person.

No matter what, people grow. If you chose not to grow, you’re staying in a small box with a small mindset. People who win go outside of that box. It’s very simple when you look at it.