Every single one of us can do things that no one else can do-can love things that no one else can love. We are like violins. We can be used for doorstops or we can make music.

You can learn new things at any time in your life if you're willing to be a beginner. If you actually learn to like being a beginner, the whole world opens up to you.

Real obstacles don't take you in circles. They can be overcome. Invented ones are like a maze.

The amount of good luck coming your way depends on your willingness to act.

Happy people have two things in common. They know exactly what they want and they feel they're moving toward getting it.

Everyone has unique gifts and talents. What you love is what you're gifted at. To be completely happy, to live a completely fulfilled life, you have to do what you love.

Not fulfilling your dreams will be a loss to the world, because the world needs everyone's gift - yours and mine.

Doing your own thing is a generous act. Being gifted creates obligations, which means you owe the world your best effort at the work you love. You too are a natural resource.

You don't need endless time and perfect conditions. Do it now. Do it today. Do it for twenty minutes and watch your heart start beating.

The cure for sorrow is to learn something.

Isolation is a dream killer.

That's the fine balance of a fiction writer...to be able to give your characters enough freedom to surprise you and yet still maintain some kind of artistic control.

I've got kids and that's important. It's funny, you think that there's an expiration date on them and there just isn't.

It is not what you have on you, but what you have in you.

I don't think it's any secret I've never been an advocate for the Affordable Care Act.

"My comfort is," said Susan, looking back at Mr. Dombey, "that I have told a piece of truth this day which ought to have been told long before and can't be told too often or too plain..."

I love to play different roles. That's just the kind of actor I am.

Rome was not built in one day.

We built this [socialistic] society not for the curbing of personal liberty, but in order that human personalities should really feel free.

I like a man who can build things. Whittle me something out of wood and I'm sold.

I think I write in order to discover on my shelf a new book that I would enjoy reading, or to see a new play that would engross me.