Having a vision for your life allows you to live out of hope, rather than out of your fears.

People who consider themselves victims of their circumstances will always remain victims unless they develop a greater vision for their lives.

When you have a sense of your own identity and a vision of where you want to go in your life, you then have the basis for reaching out to the world and going after your dreams for a better life.

People who let events and circumstances dictate their lives are living reactively. That means that they don't act on life, they only react to it.

To know yourself is the first and most important step in pursuing your dreams and goals.

All your life you compare and contrast, explore and search. But knowing yourself well is, well, elusive.

And whenever you encounter a problem, no matter how insurmountable it might seem, there is one simple response that should be ingrained in your behavior: Never give up.

If you did the same thing you did yesterday as you did today as you will do tomorrow, what have you done? The same thing.

When you set goals, you have to keep them always in mind.

The idea of being able to serve as an example, based upon how to process, how to think, how to realize our own dreams, we can pass that down to our children.

We make the best choices when we have invested all of our energies, our hearts, and our souls into a course of action that leads to the accomplishment of goals we are passionate about.

So maybe that’s what love means. Having the capacity to forgive the one who wronged you, no matter how deep the hurt was.

Art is personal, criticism shouldn't be.

if you think she is amazing, you are the ordinary one ...

The wise use of leisure, it must be conceded, is a product of civilization and education.

All my life I have been trying to learn to read, to see and hear, and to write.

Success is such a relative thing for me. I'm fundamentally a Christian which means that ultimately all of the penultimate titles and things you just had to wear with a loose garment. Really.

The American formal position has been that we oppose violence by governments against their people. That principle should not be abandoned.

I grew up castrating hogs on an Iowa farm, so when I come to Washington, I'll know how to cut pork.

These days, if you happen to be a poet you have to sing your words to get your ideas out.

I went to college, though I didn't take many writing courses.