If a big wave came at the wrong moment, it would sweep me off into forty-eight-degree water, where I might last twenty minutes. Drowning quickly might be better.

I am twelve thousand miles wiser, twelve thousand miles more resilient, and I have twelve thousand miles more faith in God.

I was so thankful that my parents trusted me enough and had enough faith in my abilities to let me follow my passion and try to do something great, even if I might fail.

Fewer people have successfully solo-circumnavigated the globe than have journeyed into space.

The things that happen on the sea take you beyond yourself, beyond human capability.

On June 10, the worst storm in the series swept across the middle of the Indian Ocean and Wild Eyes was directly in its path.

I wanted to break the record, of course, and become the youngest person to sail around the world solo and unassisted.

Wild Eyes was built for speed and I was flying down walls of water twenty and thirty feet high.

The open ocean often takes you past your physical limits and when it does, sailing becomes a mental game.

Going up the mast is one of the most dangerous things you can do as a solo sailor.

But none of that kept me from picturing what a tsunami might look like if it did rise up and roar toward my little boat like some watery blue version of the Great Wall of China.

The courage to continue is the sureness of success.

Find children in your neighborhood, Teach them how to read and writeTake them out of the darkness, Into the light

Who is sitting in that empty chair?

If you really love guitar, you're going to spend every waking hour stroking the thing.

Women don't paint very well. It's a fact. There are, of course, exceptions. Agnes Martin or, from the past, Paula Modersohn-Becker.

When the reptile is attacked at one mouth of his burrow, he shows himself at another.

Graphic design is the fiction that anticipates the fact.

I urge young women to look ahead and see if they want to have a lonely old age or do they want to have what I have, which is the joy of 14 beautiful grandchildren.

We are all servants. The only question is whom we will serve.

There is no such thing as a little country. The greatness of a people is no more determined by their numbers than the greatness of a man is by his height.