Prison was the best thing that ever happened to me.

I don’t really know that much about love, it turns out.

Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.

I try to sprinkle a little gems and jewels in the music that people could use in their own life.

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.

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.

I think it’s a very good thing to leave your country and look at it from afar.

I am not handsome or sexy. Of course, it’s not like I am hopeless.

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy. My ultimate goal is to end up being happy. Most of the time.

Peace in the world starts with peace in oneself. If everyone lives mindfully, everyone will be more healthy, feel more fulfilled in their daily lives and there will be more peace.

One friend in a lifetime is much, two are many, three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.

Sometimes it’s the journey that teaches you a lot about your destination.

Fear is exciting for me.

Let each know that for each the body, the mind and the soul have been freed to fulfill themselves.

Life opens up opportunities to you, and you either take them or you stay afraid of taking them.

Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.

My work is the only ground I’ve ever had to stand on. To put it bluntly, I seem to have a whole superstructure with no foundation, but I’m working on the foundation.

I always say this about my music, and music in general: Music is like a time capsule. Each album reflects what I’m going through or what’s going on in my life at that moment.

When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.

You’re going to go through tough times – that’s life. But I say, ‚Nothing happens to you, it happens for you.‘ See the positive in negative events.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?

Partition is bad. But whatever is past is past. We have only to look to the future.

When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.

I think I lived those years very impersonally. It was almost as though I had erected someone outside myself who was the president’s wife. I was lost somewhere deep down inside myself. That is the way I felt and worked until I left the White House.

I didn’t try to copy my dad or fit into the pressure or the mold that everybody tried to make me fit into.

When I inspire myself, I want to spread the word because its important to be healthy. I don’t think they’re teaching us enough about that. I think we should eat better and exercise. Look who’s saying that – a guy who was 300 pounds – but I’m doing a lot better than I used to. I’m letting people know its important because it makes you feel better.

I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.

Thinking is a wonderful tool if it’s applied. Thinking, however, can not become the master. Thinking is a very bad master. If you’re dominated by thinking then your life becomes very restricted.

I used to pray that God would make me a great athlete, and He never did.

I never thought of losing, but now that it‘ s happened, the only thing is to do it right. That’s my obligation to all the people who believe in me. We all have to take defeats in life.

It is impossible to underrate human intelligence – beginning with one’s own.

Sexuality is one of the ways that we become enlightened, actually, because it leads us to self-knowledge.

When I was in college I did a lot of stupid things and I don’t want to make an excuse for that. Some of the things that people accuse me of are true, some of them aren’t. There are pranks, IMs.

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

Boys do cry, but I don’t think I shed a tear for a good chunk of my teenage years.

Who had deceived thee so often as thyself?

Love is an interesting thing. Perhaps I’ve never been in love before – I don’t really know? I think I have. I guess it’s subjective in that way.

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

The White House is the finest prison in the world.

To live alone is the fate of all great souls.

I’m kind of fascist with myself, you know.

We begin to see, therefore, the importance of selecting our environment with the greatest of care, because environment is the mental feeding ground out of which the food that goes into our minds is extracted.

I try never to wear my own clothes, I pretend I’m someone else.

Failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.

Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.

If you’re not ready for everything, you’re not ready for anything.

Character is power.

Get busy living, or get busy dying.

Conflict cannot survive without your participation.

If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation.

Baseball changes through the years. It gets milder.

I admire people who destroy themselves.

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.

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.

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?

No work or love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.

I think the tiniest little thing can change the course of your day, which can change the course of your year, which can change who you are.

In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.

You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves.

The world around me has changed, and I have learned to adapt but not change. But I’m changing into the woman I am meant to be.

It’s absolutely normal that different human beings want to go different ways.