I'm sure not afraid of success and I've learned not to be afraid of failure. The only thing I'm afraid of now is of being someone I don't like much.

The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.

I would be the most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.

A finished person is a boring person.

There is a little boy inside the man who is my brother... Oh, how I hated that little boy. And how I love him too.

After all those years as a woman hearing 'not thin enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough, not this enough, not that enough,' almost overnight I woke up one morning and thought, 'I'm enough.'

Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.

There is a lot of talk now about metal detectors and gun control. Both are good things. But they are no more a solution than forks and spoons are a solution to world hunger.

Look back, to slavery, to suffrage, to integration and one thing is clear. Fashions in bigotry come and go. The right thing lasts.

You are the only person alive who has sole custody of your life ... Your entire life ... Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank account, but your soul.

America is a country that seems forever to be toddler or teenager, at those two stages of human development characterized by conflict between autonomy and security.

I waited for her to nod before pacing while I bit my lip. That hurt, so I switched to biting my finger nail.

In my worst moments, all I had to do was recall the love that I felt emanating from those heavenly lights and I could press on.

War never leaves where it found a nation.

Oh, we do not understand death, we never understand it; creatures are only truly dead when everyone else has died who knew them.

I make the necessary "corrections" if I find myself leaning too far in one direction.

Men make the moral code and they expect women to accept it.

Better is the wrong with sincerity, rather than the right with falsehood.

Success is not an accident. It is sheer hard work. There is no short-cuts. You have to take the stairs and you have to start from the bottom.

Having a pulmonary embolism is definitely easier than heart break.

There is no photograph more inherently photographic than another.