We construct a narrative for ourselves, and that’s the thread that we follow from one day to the next. People who disintegrate as personalities are the ones who lose that thread.

Face your fears and doubts, and new worlds will open to you.

Remind yourself that winning an argument or proving your point really gets you nowhere in the long run. Win through your actions, not your words.

I’ve never been pregnant, so I just feel God didn’t mean for me to have kids so that everybody else’s children could be mine.

Single life is so overrated.

Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.

It’s amazing: I am a New Yorker. It’s strange; I never thought I would be.

Adventure is not outside man; it is within.

Frivolity is inborn, conceit acquired by education.

My dad seemed comfortable with his decision to be a ‚have-not,‘ but I knew that I wasn’t.

I don’t like it when people who are young act like they’re 40. That’s taking too much on. Putting up a shield and trying to act like you’re so mature or whatever – I don’t try to act mature. Some people might say I’m mature for my age, but it’s not something I’m trying to do, you know? I’m just me.

I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.

It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting.

For me, being raised in a free America made all the difference.

I guess I’m living in the present more than the past.

The difficulties you meet will resolve themselves as you advance. Proceed, and light will dawn, and shine with increasing clearness on your path.

Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.

We forfeit three-quarters of ourselves in order to be like other people.

We all have a tendency to avoid our weaknesses. When we do that, we never progress or get any better.

Be happy with being you. Love your flaws. Own your quirks. And know that you are just as perfect as anyone else, exactly as you are.

I’m happy being myself, which I’ve never been before. I always hid in other people, or tried to find myself through the characters, or live out their lives, but I didn’t have those things in mine.

Whatever talents I possess may suddenly diminish or suddenly increase. I can with ease become an ordinary fool. I may be one now. But it doesn’t do to upset one’s own vanity.

No one has the right to be sorry for himself for a misfortune that strikes everyone.

It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world, whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always, she had to admit, interesting.

You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.

I spent most of the early years of my walk with God focused on what was wrong with me. Most of us probably do that, hoping to change ourselves.

I haven’t been faithful to my own advice in the past. I will in the future.

A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

It is very important to generate a good attitude, a good heart, as much as possible. From this, happiness in both the short term and the long term for both yourself and others will come.

When I left the University of Notre Dame, I honestly felt I would never coach again.

I went through a period when I felt my film characters were having more fun than I was. It might partly explain why I ended up tattooed or doing certain extreme things in my life.

If I make a fool of myself, who cares? I’m not frightened by anyone’s perception of me.

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

It was my delusion and naivety that brought me here.

In general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.

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?

I’ve learned over the years that when I go to that place of passion within me, there’s no force in the universe that can interfere with my completing a project.

What interests me in life is curiosity, challenges, the good fight with its victories and defeats.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

A man must now swallow more belief than he can digest.

What is a fear of living? It’s being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility for yourself – for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don’t know what you’re here to do, then just do some good.

For a young person, it is almost a sin, or at least a danger, to be too preoccupied with himself; but for the ageing person, it is a duty and a necessity to devote serious attention to himself.

All ways of living can be sanctified, and for each individual, the ideal way is that to which our Lord leads him through the natural development of his tastes and the pressure of circumstances.

I’ve always wanted to live above my means because it inspired me to work harder.

These words dropped into my childish mind as if you should accidentally drop a ring into a deep well. I did not think of them much at the time, but there came a day in my life when the ring was fished up out of the well, good as new.

If I love you, what business is it of yours?

Not being afraid to be wrong – I had to learn how to do that.

I think that I am better than the people who are trying to reform me.

The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.

Vanity is the healthiest thing in life.

The truth is, somebody is always talking about you, so you have to let it go… if it’s not a part of your God-given destiny.

I used to get into a lot of fights.

I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity.

The age in which we live, this non-stop distraction, is making it more impossible for the young generation to ever have the curiosity or discipline… because you need to be alone to find out anything.

In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.

When I look back over my life it’s almost as if there was a plan laid out for me – from the little girl who was so passionate about animals who longed to go to Africa and whose family couldn’t afford to put her through college. Everyone laughed at my dreams. I was supposed to be a secretary in Bournemouth.

There’s something which impels us to show our inner souls. The more courageous we are, the more we succeed in explaining what we know.

Good character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop good character.

Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed.

My experience has been that work is almost the best way to pull oneself out of the depths.