Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.

My favorite thing in life is writing about life, specifically the parts of life concerning love. Because, as far as I’m concerned, love is absolutely everything.

When words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain.

When you are discontent, you always want more, more, more. Your desire can never be satisfied. But when you practice contentment, you can say to yourself, ‚Oh yes – I already have everything that I really need.‘

Whenever death may surprise us, let it be welcome if our battle cry has reached even one receptive ear and another hand reaches out to take up our arms.

Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed… Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

All of us are mentors. You’re mentors right here and now. And one of the things I’ve always done throughout my life, I have always found that person, that group of people that I was going to reach my hand out and help bring them along with me.

I think what’s important is for us to decipher what is honest and what is dishonest and be accepting of those things and not operating from fear.

The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.

All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind.

Some people would like me to be round again.

I don’t have to be what you want me to be.

I want to solidify as an artist and show that as I grow as a person and make mistakes and learn from them, I’m going to grow artistically.

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

He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.

Any experience that touches you, in any particular way, is good. It can be a horrible experience.

The more you seek the uncomfortable, the more you will become comfortable.

There are no limitations to the mind except those we acknowledge.

My dad used to have an expression – ‚It is the lucky person who gets up in the morning, puts both feet on the floor, knows what they are about to do, and thinks it still matters.‘

You have to be willing to go to war with yourself and create a whole new identity.

Is everything funny? For me, yes. There’s a positive to every negative. Even my divorce? For me, yes. If you go back and look at it, why it happened or how it happened, there’s something in there that’ll make you laugh.

If you haven’t forgiven yourself something, how can you forgive others.

I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I am, which is my life, the power to create.

What we face may look insurmountable. But I learned something from all those years of training and competing. I learned something from all those sets and reps when I didn’t think I could lift another ounce of weight. What I learned is that we are always stronger than we know.

Know that any and all thoughts that you have regarding your own skills, interests, and inclinations are valid. To reinforce the validity of your thoughts, keep them private. Tell yourself that they’re between you and God.

When we see persons of worth, we should think of equaling them; when we see persons of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves.

I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.

Life is about growing and improving and getting better.

Sometimes you have to take two steps back to take ten forward.

Never complain. Never explain.

I’m really bad with answering questions. Usually, I don’t even answer them. I try to find inspiration inside of the question. I think, and I jump from one beam of inspiration or energy to the next, as opposed to explaining the energy.

I know the blessing of having a dad who played 16 years in the league. That experience, and seeing him as an example, let me know that it’s possible. It’s not easy, but it’s possible.

We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man’s features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.

Be not a slave of words.

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

Ideas are the beginning points of all fortunes.

No matter what your mission is, have some notion in your head. Forget the model, whether it’s government or nonprofit or profit. Ask yourself the more important question: Is my mission improving the world? Are you sure about it? Seek to disconfirm that all the time. And if you can, change your mission.

Whenever I write a novel, I have a strong sense that I am doing something I was unable to do before. With each new work, I move up a step and discover something new inside me.

If you wish to succeed in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.

I’m the kind of person who needs to feel like everything happens for a reason. When you date a guy and it goes badly, that’s horrible. But if you can write a song about it, then it was worth it.

I was so rude when I was a little girl.

Never regret what you don’t write.

When I was writing ‚Kitchen Confidential,‘ I was in my 40s, I had never paid rent on time, I was 10 years behind on my taxes, I had never owned my own furniture or a car.

You don’t have the same mentality as you did five years ago – even one year. People are always changing, and I believe that everyone deserves the space to change and for people to recognize their change.

My fans saw me get engaged, saw me make that woman my wife, me having kids, me divorcing, me talking about divorce before the divorce, me talking about my kids‘ reaction to that divorce.

Good leadership consists of showing average people how to do the work of superior people.

Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.

What humility does for one is it reminds us that there are people before me. I have already been paid for. And what I need to do is prepare myself so that I can pay for someone else who has yet to come but who may be here and needs me.

That was always the difference between Muhammad Ali and the rest of us. He came, he saw, and if he didn’t entirely conquer – he came as close as anybody we are likely to see in the lifetime of this doomed generation.

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

I gather from motivation around me – from a lot of personalities who have done well in their respective fields.

Only the insecure strive for security.

A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there’s less of you.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

Most of us aren’t defeated in one decisive battle. We are defeated one tiny, seemingly insignificant surrender at a time that chips away at who we should really be.

Enjoy the satisfaction that comes from doing little things well.

Every thought you produce, anything you say, any action you do, it bears your signature.

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

The fact that you are willing to say, ‚I do not understand, and it is fine,‘ is the greatest understanding you could exhibit.

I am a part of everything that I have read.