Well, I screwed it up real good, didn’t I?

Getting old is a fascination thing. The older you get, the older you want to get.

If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values – that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.

I’m not a bad person.

I’ve learned a lot since I was a new mother. My approach to struggle and shame now is to talk to yourself like you’d talk to someone you love and reach out to tell your story.

I just wanted to write something about running, but I realized that to write about my running is to write about my writing. It’s a parallel thing in me.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.

The one thing I regret was that my work required an enormous amount of my time, and a lot of travel.

Pride is pleasure arising from a man’s thinking too highly of himself.

It’s like, remember who you always were, where you came from, who your parents were, how they raised you. Because that authentic self is going to follow you all through life, so make sure that it’s solid so it’s something that you can hold on and be proud of for the rest of your life.

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.

The time when most of you should withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd.

Occasionally the conflict between ‚what we stand for‘ and ‚what we do‘ has been forthrightly addressed.

To not follow your passion in life is a recipe for failure and unhappiness.

See how many are better off than you are, but consider how many are worse.

To solve any problem, here are three questions to ask yourself: First, what could I do? Second, what could I read? And third, who could I ask?

Shall I, that have destroyed my Preservers, return home?

The most deeply personal of my works are the non-fiction works, the autobiographical works, because there, I’m talking about myself very directly.

For years I wanted to be older, and now I am.

Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

Testing oneself is best when done alone.

I long remained a child, and I am still one in many respects.

We often want one thing and pray for another, not telling the truth even to the gods.

It was my delusion and naivety that brought me here.

I always wonder when it was that I was embraced.

I have never smuggled anything in my life. Why, then, do I feel an uneasy sense of guilt on approaching a customs barrier?

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.

George Bush made a mistake when he referred to the Saddam Hussein regime as ‚evil.‘ Every liberal and leftist knows how to titter at such black-and-white moral absolutism.

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.

Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there’s time, the Bastard Time.

My pride fell with my fortunes.

If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?

To be ashamed of one’s immorality: that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one’s morality.

When I had to make a decision whether or not an activity was appropriate for the Sabbath, I simply asked myself, ‚What sign do I want to give to God?‘ That question made my choices about the Sabbath day crystal clear.

Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.

I fear that many a man’s good resolutions only need the ordinary fire of daily life to make them melt away. So, too, with fine professions and the boastings of perfection which abound in this age of shams.

Too often in life, something happens and we blame other people for us not being happy or satisfied or fulfilled. So the point is, we all have choices, and we make the choice to accept people or situations or to not accept situations.

I don’t think anything about a personal legacy. I mean, those words would never come out of my mouth unless I just repeated them. Those things have never been important to me.

I don’t think that much about my relationship with my mother and what it did to me. I sometimes feel terrible regret about her, what her life must have been like. Often, when I’m enjoying something, I think of how meager her rewards were and how much courage, in a way, she needed to go on living.

I’ve actually taken companies public, I’ve actually busted companies, I’ve actually gone broke.

If you start to think of your physical and moral condition, you usually find that you are sick.

Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.

I’m just wanting to make the proper breakfast and keep the house. That’s my passion. At the request of my kids, I’m taking cooking classes. As I go to sleep at night, I think, ‚Did I do a great job as a mom, or was that an average day?‘

I love us so incredibly, insanely deeply; it’s almost unbearable to see what we do to ourselves.

The greatest magnifying glasses in the world are a man’s own eyes when they look upon his own person.

One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.

I’ve always believed in God. I also think that’s the sort of thing that either comes as part of the equipment, the capacity to believe, or at some point in your life, when you’re in a position where you actually need help from a power greater than yourself, you simply make an agreement.

He that speaks much, is much mistaken.

As you think, so shall you become.

Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone.

Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.

No man ever achieved worth-while success who did not, at one time or other, find himself with at least one foot hanging well over the brink of failure.

The mind of a 19-year-old is very different from the mind of a 26-year-old. You grow. You get into better relationships. You experience more, meet more people, better people. But when you’re in a dark hole at an earlier point in your life – you write about the mindset you’re in at that moment.

I would like to be remembered as someone who did the best she could with the talent she had.

Perhaps I can say that I am a bit astute, that I can adapt to circumstances, but it is also true that I am a bit naive. Yes, but the best summary, the one that comes more from the inside and I feel most true is this: I am a sinner whom the Lord has looked upon.

A man is born alone and dies alone; and he experiences the good and bad consequences of his karma alone; and he goes alone to hell or the Supreme abode.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Man the individual consoles himself for his passing with the thought of the offspring or the works which he leaves behind.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

Questioning my spiritual life has always been germane to what I was writing. Always. It’s because I’m not quite an atheist and it worries me. There’s that little bit that holds on: ‚Well, I’m almost an atheist. Give me a couple of months.‘