In my opinion, what makes a great book is something that is universally specific.

You cannot live your life to please others. The choice must be yours.

Whatever you are made of, be the best of that.

A man told me that for a woman, I was very opinionated. I said, 'for a man you're kind of ignorant'.

I have no aspirations of world domination through the pop charts. None at all.

I believe I've always been a big believer in equality. No one has ever been able to tell me I couldn't do something because I was a girl.

I think that people had this idea that I sat at home and sucked on lollipops and ate cotton candy while I watched cartoons - wearing a tiara.

Oftentimes, what you wind up learning is very different than what you expect.

But you have to remember in life that there's a positive to every negative and a negative to every positive.

Your face needs to have character if you're an actor - otherwise you're just a face.

I've always believed in people's capacity for goodness. I still believe that people are good. What I'm not so trusting about anymore is their relationship to their own goodness.

I'm going to paraphrase Thoreau here... rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness... give me truth.

Better light a candle than curse the darkness.

Being sad with the right people is better than being happy with the wrong ones.

We have built a greenhouse, a human greenhouse, where once there bloomed a sweet and wild garden.

If you want someone to feel warm, you dress them in a warm color and put a warm light on them and you get the picture. Sometimes, all that needs pushing a little bit to help tell the story.

To throw oneself into strange teachings is quite dangerous.

the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and its accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion

Machines built by human beings they will function correctly if we provide them with a very specific environment. But if that environment is changed they won't function at all.

My dad did teach me a very important lesson about people when he explained to me that everybody around you will have an invisible sign on their head, which says, "Make me feel important."