The experience of pain or loss can be a formidably motivating force.

I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.

There’s no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.

Sometimes if you got a problem deep rooted in your life, it takes a little bit of time to overcome it in that area.

To me, a leader is someone who holds her- or himself accountable for finding potential in people and processes. And so what I think is really important is sustainability.

I used to have a real problem with self-pity. Every time the devil would throw a pity party, I would attend.

You can’t stop everything from happening. But we’ve gotten to a point where we’re certainly trying. If a car doesn’t have four hundred air bags in it, then it’s no good.

When fate hands you a lemon, make lemonade.

Nothing becomes so offensive so quickly as grief. When fresh it finds someone to console it, but when it becomes chronic, it is ridiculed, and rightly.

It is never too late to give up our prejudices.

Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.

I hate violence, yes I do. It’s kind of a dilemma, huh?.

A game is like a mirror that allows you to look at yourself.

I have seen many storms in my life. Most storms have caught me by surprise, so I had to learn very quickly to look further and understand that I am not capable of controlling the weather, to exercise the art of patience and to respect the fury of nature.

I don’t think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains.

Some people are very good at being ‚stars‘ and it suits them. I’m grudging about it and I find it annoying.

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

I want to represent… to the kids to draw strength from me. So they can see that everybody goes through something, but you can rise up and do your best. Just try.

As I’m traveling around, I meet many small children. And when I look at a small and think how we’ve harmed this beautiful planet since I was that age, I feel a kind of desperation, anger, shame. I don’t know what I feel; I just don’t know what the emotion is.

My body is quite tiny, but a lot of the emotions I feel are pretty explosive. They have to come out.

Things do not always happen the way I would like them to happen, and I had better get used to that.

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.

All of us are mentors. You’re mentors right here and now. And one of the things I’ve always done throughout my life, I have always found that person, that group of people that I was going to reach my hand out and help bring them along with me.

San Francisco is gone. Nothing remains of it but memories.

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.

Most damage that others do us is out of fear, humiliation and pain. Those feelings occur in all of us, not just in those of us who profess a certain religious or racial devotion.

Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others.

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.

The man who has done his level best… is a success, even though the world may write him down a failure.

Vulnerability is basically uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.

It’s in the difficult times that we’re growing and you can’t just rebuke everything hard. We’ve got to endure it and fight the good fight of faith and pass the test.

We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.

If you are living out of a sense of obligation you are slave.

I’ve had some dark nights of the soul, of course, but giving in to depression would be a sellout, a defeat.

I’m going to be so much better a president for having been at the CIA that you’re not going to believe it.

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

It’s not fun to get out of bed early in the morning. When the alarm goes off, it doesn’t sing you a song: it hits you in the head with a baseball bat. So how do you respond to that? Do you crawl underneath your covers and hide? Or do you get up, get aggressive, and attack the day?

When I was into my 30s, I became increasingly depressed by rejection letters. I had had the feeling that by the time I was 30, I would be established. But I was not at all. By the time of ‚Lives of Girls and Women,‘ I was into my 40s and I had become more thin-skinned.

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.

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.

I’m not a bad person.

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.

A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.

It is our duty as men and women to proceed as though the limits of our abilities do not exist.

People can try to reinvent themselves. I don’t think you can really change who you are, though, because who you are is pretty much where you came from and what you’ve done up to now.

I probably wouldn’t have made it this far if I were a refugee.

When we look back on all the perils through which we have passed and at the mighty foes that we have laid low and all the dark and deadly designs that we have frustrated, why should we fear for our future? We have come safely through the worst.

I learned to fly a few years ago in England. It’s the only place I’m completely alone – up in the air, detached from everything.

I’ve discovered that when we take time to renew our minds with God’s Word, we learn how to think like God thinks, say what God says, and act like He wants us to act.

I’m tired. I’m tired of feeling rejected by the American people. I’m tired of waking up in the middle of the night worrying about the war.

When I was younger, I felt pressure to become someone else once I became successful.

I’m on record that it didn’t really traumatize me to do away with some people.

The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability.

The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.

After great pain, a formal feeling comes. The Nerves sit ceremonious, like tombs.

I’ve lived a very colorful life, and I’ve said some things, But not once have I taken them back, and I’ve never apologized for them – and I won’t.

I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‚Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.

I don’t concern myself with award. I’d been to the party enough times to know it really didn’t matter.

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.

My whole family have all been through a difficult time. My focus is my children, our children.

When people are very damaged, they can often meet the world with a kind of defiance.