There are going to be good days and bad days. Bottom line.

Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.

Patience is key for getting over a breakup. That, and trailing off your interaction after the breakup.

What a waste it is to lose one’s mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.

Beware the hobby that eats.

I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame.

Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.

Just because something didn’t work out your way, or somebody disappointed you, that does not change who you are.

I’m tender on the inside.

That is why, no matter how desperate the predicament is, I am always very much in earnest about clutching my cane, straightening my derby hat and fixing my tie, even though I have just landed on my head.

Keeping an active mind has been vital to my survival, as has been maintaining a sense of humor.

Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.

Fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.

Have fun in your command. Don’t always run at a breakneck pace. Take leave when you’ve earned it, spend time with your families.

I’m a Sagittarius, and one of our major qualities is that we’re blindly optimistic.

I have lost my mental faculties but am perfectly well.

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerance. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.

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

I say there’re no depressed words just depressed minds.

If I relaxed, if I took my foot off the gas, I would probably die.

There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell.

I found music to be the therapy of choice. I guess it is for a lot of people.

Women, like men, should try to do the impossible. And when they fail, their failure should be a challenge to others.

Human nature is not nearly as bad as it has been thought to be.

All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming.

I like criticism. It makes you strong.

When people are taken out of their depths they lose their heads, no matter how charming a bluff they may put up.

I have a great respect for incremental improvement, and I’ve done that sort of thing in my life, but I’ve always been attracted to the more revolutionary changes. I don’t know why. Because they’re harder. They’re much more stressful emotionally. And you usually go through a period where everybody tells you that you’ve completely failed.

When life is too easy for us, we must beware or we may not be ready to meet the blows which sooner or later come to everyone, rich or poor.

Since I was 16, I’ve felt a black cloud hangs over me. Since then, I have taken pills for depression.

Chemotherapy isn’t good for you. So when you feel bad, as I am feeling now, you think, ‚Well that is a good thing because it’s supposed to be poison. If it’s making the tumor feel this queasy, then I’m OK with it.‘

Courage is grace under pressure.

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.

Neither should a ship rely on one small anchor, nor should life rest on a single hope.

Living in America and, of course, just being women in general, we’ve got more strength than we think we do.

The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there… and still on your feet.

There is a lot of pressure put on me, but I don’t put a lot of pressure on myself. I feel if I play my game, it will take care of itself.

My mother was a professional sick person; she took a lot of pain pills. There are many people like that. It’s just how they are used to getting attention. I always remember she’s the daughter of alcoholics who’d leave her alone at Christmas time.

When things are going bad, there’s going to be some good that’s going to come from it.

Give yourself a gift of five minutes of contemplation in awe of everything you see around you. Go outside and turn your attention to the many miracles around you. This five-minute-a-day regimen of appreciation and gratitude will help you to focus your life in awe.

‚Mean‘ is a song I wrote about somebody who wrote things that were so mean so many times that it would ruin my day. Then it would ruin the next day. And it would level me so many times, I just felt like I was being hit in the face every time this person would take to their computer.

Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.

Alas, after a certain age every man is responsible for his face.

I just think it’s so important not to take yourself too seriously.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

When someone bestows something on you, no matter how true it is, when someone says, ‚Sexiest Man Alive,‘ I’m honestly going, ‚Thank you. Right on.‘ For me, it’s never canceled out anything, it’s never made me go, ‚Does this make me less talented of an actor?‘

How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.

It is in the admission of ignorance and the admission of uncertainty that there is a hope for the continuous motion of human beings in some direction that doesn’t get confined, permanently blocked, as it has so many times before in various periods in the history of man.

Any idea, plan, or purpose may be placed in the mind through repetition of thought.

What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

I am alone a lot, which is good. I need that time to just be alone after a long day, just decompress. So, I go to either my house or the hotel, or my apartment, or whatever – wherever I am, I go home and I watch TV and I sit there, with my cat, and I just watch TV or go online, check my emails.

When you go to an oasis, you go there to supply yourself with the vital things you are missing, things that you need.

Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.

The person who doesn’t scatter the morning dew will not comb gray hairs.

Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.

Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.

America makes prodigious mistakes, America has colossal faults, but one thing cannot be denied: America is always on the move. She may be going to Hell, of course, but at least she isn’t standing still.

One ought to hold on to one’s heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.

I had my moments of being humiliated, and then I had moments of doing something humiliating. I’m glad I lived out both roles.

If you keep feeling a point that has been sharpened, the point cannot long preserve its sharpness.

With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.