You can’t have it all, all at once. Who – man or woman – has it all, all at once? Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all. But in different periods of time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.

I have had fun being who I became, so to speak.

As this long and difficult war ends, I would like to address a few special words to the American people: Your steadfastness in supporting our insistence on peace with honor has made peace with honor possible.

Different taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

Don’t feel sorry for me.

There ought to be an artistic depot where the artist need only hand in his artwork in order to receive what he asks for. As things are, one must be half a business man, and how can one understand – good heavens! – that’s what I really call troublesome.

I always try to do as much as I can do. I’m never a person that does not enough, because I’d regret not doing enough and think I probably could have done more. I probably go too far and have to reel myself back in, which works in some things, and other things it doesn’t work.

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy. My ultimate goal is to end up being happy. Most of the time.

I definitely don’t think that money can buy you love. It can buy you affection but certainly not love.

If you insist upon fighting to protect me, or ‚our‘ country, let it be understood soberly and rationally between us that you are fighting to gratify a sex instinct which I cannot share; to procure benefits where I have not shared and probably will not share.

I’m afraid that people who know me as I usually am will discover I have another side, a better and finer side. I’m afraid they’ll mock me, think I’m ridiculous and sentimental and not take me seriously. I’m used to not being taken seriously, but only the ‚light-hearted‘ Anne is used to it and can put up with it; the ‚deeper‘ Anne is too weak.

Loving people live in a loving world. Hostile people live in a hostile world. Same world.

The one thing that I keep learning over and over again is that I don’t know nothing. I mean, that’s my life lesson.

I think the perfection of love is that it’s not perfect.

I can honestly say, after talking about my mom passing away, I got the biggest weight off of my chest. Comedy is my therapy. That’s how I deal with my problems, my personal battles. I talk about it. I give it to my fans. When they laugh at it, it’s a release, for lack of a better word.

I believe enlightenment or revelation comes in daily life. I look for joy, the peace of action. You need action. I’d have stopped writing years ago if it were for the money.

I wish people would love everybody else the way they love me. It would be a better world.

I never admire another’s fortune so much that I became dissatisfied with my own.

People don’t usually compliment your character.

As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.

Be as polite to the custodian as you are to the chairman of the board.

No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

Black people in America, people from the struggle, immigrants, it’s no generational wealth that we are attached to, so we are tasked to create – in one generation – closing the gap. That’s why we so Doomsday about getting to the check: ‚cause it’s life or death for real.

How do I confront aging? With a wonder and a terror. Yeah, I’ll say that. Wonder and terror.

In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.

One of the signs of passing youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as we take our place among them.

If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.

Experience is the teacher of all things.

There are no facts, only interpretations.

If you don’t live your life, then who will?

Sometimes you must suffer through something to defeat your fear of it.

Love is the flower you’ve got to let grow.

Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had.

In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.

When I wake up in the morning, I feel just like any other insecure 24-year-old girl.

Look at a book. A book is the right size to be a book. They’re solar-powered. If you drop them, they keep on being a book. You can find your place in microseconds. Books are really good at being books, and no matter what happens, books will survive.

We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.

The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one’s appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship.

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.

We begin to see, therefore, the importance of selecting our environment with the greatest of care, because environment is the mental feeding ground out of which the food that goes into our minds is extracted.

Over the years I’ve learned how to lock myself up in a prison of hope, knowing that God has nothing but His best planned for me. He promised me things concerning my ministry and my life.

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

I was kind of secretly hoping one of my kids would go out and make a million bucks. So when they put me in a home, at least I’ll have a window with a view.

I vividly remember a conversation I had many years ago in 1974, which marked a turning point in my leadership journey. I was sitting at a Holiday Inn with my friend, Kurt Campmeyer, when he asked me if I had a personal growth plan. I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even know you were supposed to have one.

We’ve got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant. You can’t just accept it and leave it in the cupboard or just think it’s going to get on by itself. You’ve got to keep watering it. You’ve got to really look after it and nurture it.

With patient and firm determination, I am going to press on for jobs. I’m going to press on for equality. I’m going to press on for the sake of our children. I’m going to press on for the sake of all those families who are struggling right now. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I am going to press on.

To know oneself, one should assert oneself.

I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up – they have no holidays.

Oh, God, I struggle with low self-esteem all the time! I think everyone does. I have so much wrong with me, it’s unbelievable!

It takes no more time to see the good side of life than it takes to see the bad.

I thank God I’m myself and for the life I’m given to live and for friends and lovers and beloveds, and I thank God for knowing that all those people have already paid for me.

Before the effect one believes in different causes than one does after the effect.

You have to see and smell and feel the circumstances of people to really understand them.

At the bottom of education, at the bottom of politics, even at the bottom of religion, there must be for our race economic independence.

I’m never a reliable narrator, unbiased or objective.

I know now that there is no one thing that is true – it is all true.

Nature does nothing in vain.

What’s really hard is that you could care a lot for someone and not want to live with him anymore.

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.

In a universe that’s an intelligent system with a divine creative force supporting it, there simply can be no accidents. As tough as it is to acknowledge, you had to go through what you went through in order to get to where you are today, and the evidence is that you did.