The book you don’t read won’t help.

I think as long as I do a good job and put in all my effort to proving that I’m worth it, then everything should be fine.

Shakespeare didn’t work at all for me.

Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.

Vanity can create a very cruel space for you if you don’t know how to manage it.

Many people tell me that they don ‚t know what to feel when they finish one of my books because the story was dark, or complicated, or strange. But while they were reading it, they were inside my world and they were happy. That’s good.

A man’s character is his fate.

If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.

I read all the time, and I’m often struck by something I’m reading.

I’ve learned never to say never.

The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice.

Everything I learned I learned from the movies.

I don’t feel too much pressure. I only see an opportunity.

The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

If anything is good for pounding humility into you permanently, it’s the restaurant business.

If you’re not very clever you should be conciliatory.

I was a sociology major. And it had nothing to do necessarily with law, which is ultimately – I went to law school. But what I tried to do was choose something that I was passionate about or something that I cared about.

We have to wake up. We have to refuse to be a clone.

The less you know, the more you believe.

I specifically did not read other First Ladies‘ books, because I didn’t want to be influenced by how they defined the role. I knew that I would have to find this role – very uniquely and specifically to me and who I was.

Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil.

I think beating myself up sometimes and knowing I am not happy when I do it makes me work harder to do a good job.

If you set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.

The training of children is a profession, where we must know how to waste time in order to save it.

There are two ways of being happy: We must either diminish our wants or augment our means – either may do – the result is the same and it is for each man to decide for himself and to do that which happens to be easier.

I add this, that rational ability without education has oftener raised man to glory and virtue, than education without natural ability.

I invented my life by taking for granted that everything I did not like would have an opposite, which I would like.

Nine-tenths of the existing books are nonsense and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.

Everything has its limit – iron ore cannot be educated into gold.

If a man empties his purse into his head, no one can take it from him.

My mother never gave up one me. I messed up in school so much they were sending me home, but my mother sent me right back.

There is no darkness but ignorance.

You are going to let the fear of poverty govern you life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.

The cool thing about reading is that when you read a short story or you read something that takes your mind and expands where your thoughts can go, that’s powerful.

I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.

Your success, or lack of success, is your responsibility. Even when you have a chain of command that you don’t like as well, its your responsibility to work with the up chain of command.

Things do not change; we change.

Getting stress out of your life takes more than prayer alone. You must take action to make changes and stop doing whatever is causing the stress. You can learn to calm down in the way you handle things.

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

Take the complications, rules, shoulds, musts, have tos, and so on out of your life. By uncomplicating your life and removing the trivial pursuits that occupy so much of it, you open a channel for the genius within you to emerge.

All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.

A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.

A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.

Love is the flower you’ve got to let grow.

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

Doing the box set is one of those things where you get to rewrite your own history to some extent. We could take out some of the songs that we felt weren’t as strong as some of the others, so you look better.

But by reading them again and again finally I was able to grasp the essential part. What emotion, enthusiasm, enlightenment and confidence they communicated to me! I wept for joy.

The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.

How well he’s read, to reason against reading!

I brought myself down. I impeached myself by resigning.

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

As a lifestyle you always being the focal point is innately unhealthy.

I know that I’m not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don’t know how not to.

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

I wasn’t that great a chef, and I don’t think I’m that great a writer.

We will invest in our people, quality education, job opportunity, family, neighborhood, and yes, a thing we call America.

As far as I’m concerned, I’m a writer who’s writing books, and therefore, I don’t want to die. You’d miss the end of the book wouldn’t you? You can’t die with an unfinished book.

You have to be able to accept failure to get better.

Whenever you’re going through a tough time, generally, you become more compassionate, you become softer, you become more thoughtful, kinder. These are all spiritual qualities that will help you to align yourself with God and God consciousness rather than with a split fear-based consciousness.

If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not as an example.

I am what libraries and librarians have made me, with little assistance from a professor of Greek and poets.