When you get to a place where you understand that love and belonging, your worthiness, is a birthright and not something you have to earn, anything is possible.

I grew up with the sea, and poverty for me was sumptuous; then I lost the sea and found all luxuries gray and poverty unbearable.

I think, for years, people have been pushed down by religion, and I don’t say that disrespectfully, but they’ve been shown a God that you can’t measure up to.

If we’re really honest with ourselves, most of us will admit that we want to impress people, and this is what’s causing us to do what we do.

A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.

I think a big test we all face in life on a regular basis is that discouragement test. Life’s not always fair, but I believe if you keep doing the right thing, God will get you to where you are.

In my videos, I always want to be a powerful woman. That’s my mission.

Mine is only one of the millions of hearts broken over the death of Whitney Houston, I will always be grateful and in awe of the wonderful performance she did on my song, and I can truly say from the bottom of my heart, ‚Whitney, I will always love you. You will be missed.‘

If someone you know makes a bad decision or uses bad judgment, it doesn’t mean you have to allow that to alter your attitude. Why should you allow anyone else’s bad decisions to send you into a tailspin of misery?

Bring them on.

I change during the course of a day. I wake and I’m one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I’m somebody else.

The more I see the less I know for sure.

I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.

The fact is that ours is the first generation that can look disease and extreme poverty in the eye, look across the ocean to Africa, and say this, and mean it. We do not have to stand for this. A whole continent written off – we do not have to stand for this.

I want to work; then, as my kids get older, I want to have adventures. I want to visit all their countries: learn and live inside all their cultures.

At one point I learned transcendental meditation. This was 30-something years ago. It took me back to the way that I naturally was as a child growing up way in the country, rarely seeing people. I was in that state of oneness with creation and it was as if I didn’t exist except as a part of everything.

He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.

The most intense conflicts, if overcome, leave behind a sense of security and calm that is not easily disturbed. It is just these intense conflicts and their conflagration which are needed to produce valuable and lasting results.

Who could refrain that had a heart to love and in that heart courage to make love known?

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.

It was weird to be married; you kind of lose your identity. You’re suddenly somebody’s wife. And you’re like, ‚Oh, I’m half of a couple now. I’ve lost me.‘

You should hurry up and acquire the cigar habit. It’s one of the major happinesses. And so much more lasting than love, so much less costly in emotional wear and tear.

Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.

Greater love hath no man than to attend the Episcopal Church with his wife.

You can’t blame gravity for falling in love.

I just want to be myself.

It may be possible to gild pure gold, but who can make his mother more beautiful?

I have a son, who is my heart. A wonderful young man, daring and loving and strong and kind.

Our passions are like convulsion fits, which, though they make us stronger for a time, leave us the weaker ever after.

Adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is most beneficial to us.

I’m an introvert somewhat. There could be a room full of people, I’ll go stand in the corner.

Because I am a mother, I am capable of being shocked: as I never was when I was not one.

No matter what love throws at you, you have to believe in it.

Reversing your treatment of the man you have wronged is better than asking his forgiveness.

No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.

If I am no longer disturbed myself, I will deal less with disturbed people, but I don’t regret having concerned myself with them because I think most of us are disturbed.

I love getting out of my comfort zone.

It is necessary to fall in love… if only to provide an alibi for all the random despair you are going to feel anyway.

Be of love a little more careful than of anything.

We have observed that, in society and the world in which we live, selfishness has increased more than love for others, and that men of good will must work, each with his own strengths and expertise, to ensure that love for others increases until it is equal and possibly exceeds love for oneself.

Everyone got kind of crazy with me mentioning I was in love with a woman.

It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.

I don’t see the point of doing an interview unless you’re going to share the things you learn in life and the mistakes you make. So to admit that I’m extremely human and have done some dark things I don’t think makes me unusual or unusually dark. I think it actually is the right thing to do, and I’d like to think it’s the nice thing to do.

I wouldn’t say I’m a feminist, but I don’t like girls pretending to be stupid because it’s easier.

The quote-unquote ‚description‘ of a leading man was once your tall, handsome man with the build of whatever, almost a trophy to some degree. I think now it’s about making a leading man what you want a leading man to be. In this day, you can’t deny talent. You look at Jonah Hill, you look at Zach Galifianakis, you look at myself.

My future is righteousness.

To do the same thing over and over again is not only boredom: it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do.

I want to negotiate what I’m worth. I want to put my analytics forward, man-to-man, and to be like, ‚This is what I’m owed now. Pay me.‘ And then we can talk.

Pray that success will not come any faster than you are able to endure it.

Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.

I always knew from that moment, from the time I found myself at home in that little segregated library in the South, all the way up until I walked up the steps of the New York City library, I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, I’ll be OK. It really helped me as a child, and that never left me.

I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.

If you’ve lost your spirit, even living in the richest country in the world can’t help you become rich.

I’m not a centerfold.

You can bear your own faults, and why not a fault in your wife?

If there are people you haven’t forgiven, you’re not going to really awaken. You have to let go.

I learned, when I look in the mirror and tell my story, that I should be myself and not peep whatever everybody is doing.

All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.

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

Fashion is here to help make people look very important. If they have good taste and choose what suits them, I give them options on how they can do that. It’s always sexy, and it’s always with the same result: making women look fantastic.