Once you start compromising your thoughts, you're a candidate for mediocrity.

If you can go through life without experiencing pain you probably haven't been born yet.

If no one ever took risks, Michaelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor.

Talent is the gift plus the passion - a desire to succeed so intense that no force on earth can stop it.

Never underestimate the stimulation of eccentricity.

It's always painful when you're writing memoirs because you've got to go through the dark places, but it gives you a chance to find out the person you really are, not the person you thought you were.

Take care of him. And make him feel important. And if you can do that, you'll have a happy and wonderful marriage. Like two out of every ten couples.

I love living. I have some problems with my life, but living is the best thing they've come up with so far.

Writing is an escape from a world that crowds me. I like being alone in a room. It's almost a form of meditation- an investigation of my own life.

I was constantly being dragged out of movies for laughing too loud.

Everyone thinks they can write a play; you just write down what happened to you. But the art of it is drawing from all the moments of your life.

Love cannot be hidden. It even shines in the darkest places." ~ Carla Olson Gade, The Shadow Catcher's Daughter

The person who wants to make it has to sweat. There are no short cuts. And you've got to have the guts to be hated.

We are all children of the same God, and we have to come together to solve our problems and not be fighting so much.

I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under.

The first revolution is when you change your mind

I just couldn't stop thinking about what landmines are doing to people here. I told people - my friends - about it, but it was just not enough. I knew I had to do more.

I have need of a friend. There is one and only one who will give the air from his failing lungs for my body's mend. And that one is my love.

The world is growing gentle, But few know what she owes To the understanding lily And the judgment of the rose.

The power of the Holy Spirit cannot be successfully duplicated. If a person is supernaturally changed and given a love for God's glory, God did it.

Like we were connected, the echo of his pain twisted inside inside me. his pain, my pain.