When I was 8 years old I became a mute and was a mute until I was 13, and I thought of my whole body as an ear, so I can go into a crowd and sit still and absorb all sound. That talent or ability has lasted and served me until today.

My mother, I suppose, is still a main figure in my life because her life was so sad and unfair, and she so brave, but also because she was determined to make me into the Sunday-school-recitation little girl I was, from the age of seven or so, fighting not to be.

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.

I’m working at trying to be a Christian, and that’s serious business. It’s like trying to be a good Jew, a good Muslim, a good Buddhist, a good Shintoist, a good Zoroastrian, a good friend, a good lover, a good mother, a good buddy – it’s serious business.

In other words, don’t expect to always be great. Disappointments, failures and setbacks are a normal part of the lifecycle of a unit or a company and what the leader has to do is constantly be up and say ‚we have a problem, let’s go and get it‘.

Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.

Friendship is a plant of slow growth and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.

It is all fiction, only autobiographical in the sense it is about a small town. None of the incidents in the book ever happened to me as a child. I didn’t have an eventful childhood.

Someday I want to have children and give them all the love I never had.

We should not give up and we should not allow the problem to defeat us.

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

You simply have to accept that your demons are a part of you.

It is any day better to stand erect with a broken and bandaged head then to crawl on one’s belly, in order to be able to save one’s head.

I think that there is never an indispensable leader, you know? I think that there is a time with dignity that one needs to leave.

Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.

Part of the reason for the ugliness of adults, in a child’s eyes, is that the child is usually looking upwards, and few faces are at their best when seen from below.

Basically, when you get to my age, you’ll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you.

If you try to fight the course, it will beat you.

I let the American people down.

I’ll tell you what I was like as a child. I was a good person. I was high-spirited but I was a big reader.

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

I was called ‚Dumbo,‘ like the elephant, as a child because I couldn’t understand things at school.

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

All of us should be on guard against beliefs that flatter ourselves. At the very least, we should check such beliefs against facts.

What I have in common with the character in ‚Truman‘ is this incredible need to please people. I feel like I want to take care of everyone and I also feel this terrible guilt if I am unable to. And I have felt this way ever since all this success started.

It’s always appealing to play a character that has to overcome himself as well as an obstacle. It makes the drama so much deeper.

Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.

Adventuring can be for the ordinary person with ordinary qualities, such as I regard myself.

Everyone has at least one story, and each of us is funny if we admit it. You have to admit you’re the funniest person you’ve ever heard of.

See, when you drive home today, you’ve got a big windshield on the front of your car. And you’ve got a little bitty rearview mirror. And the reason the windshield is so large and the rearview mirror is so small is because what’s happened in your past is not near as important as what’s in your future.

When I was young, poverty was so common that we didn’t know it had a name.

I always tell young girls, surround yourself with goodness. I learned early on how to get the haters out of my life.

Truthfully, without over-egging it, as I often do, the library and journalism, those things made me who I am.

In the child, consciousness rises out of the depths of unconscious psychic life, at first like separate islands, which gradually unite to form a ‚continent,‘ a continuous landmass of consciousness. Progressive mental development means, in effect, extension of consciousness.

Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.

I was so ashamed of who I was.

Things do not change; we change.

This has always been my life and no one else’s, and that’s how it’s always been since the day I came in it.

I’ve never been shy or secretive with the fact that if you walk into my life, you may be walking onto a record.

We cannot learn men from books.

Usually, people have a tendency to be caught in the worries concerning the future or in the regret concerning the past. There is some kind of energy that is pushing them to run, and they are not able to establish themselves in the present moment.

Courage is being scared to death… and saddling up anyway.

Every single one of us has a few months here or there that feel like dark months.

I built a label at the same time I built a career.

Man has two great spiritual needs. One is for forgiveness. The other is for goodness.

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.

Behold the child, by Nature’s kindly law pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw.

In ‚Changeling,‘ I tried to show something you’d never see nowadays – a kid sitting and looking at the radio. Just sitting in front of the radio and listening. Your mind does the rest.

Our Creator expects His children everywhere to educate themselves.

Peace in the world starts with peace in oneself. If everyone lives mindfully, everyone will be more healthy, feel more fulfilled in their daily lives and there will be more peace.

I’m not intimidated by how people perceive me.

The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.

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

I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.

Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.

I think the worst part about a breakup sometimes, if one could choose a worst part, would possibly be if you get out of a relationship, and you don’t recognize yourself because you changed a lot about you.

Always take hold of things by the smooth handle.

Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.

Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.

You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.

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.