People have writer's block not because they can't write, but because they despair of writing eloquently.

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.

One cannot have a future if he does not serve God, the one and only God

Comedians don't laugh. They're too busy analyzing why it's funny or not.

In adopting the republican form of government, I not only took it as a man does his wife, for better, for worse, but, what few men do with their wives, I took it knowing all its bad qualities.

I think I do have my own technique. I don't like to depend on teachers. So I'm walking on my own way, and I try to be as natural as I can. I think it's the only way to be yourself.

As a rule, anything that is pretty you avoid when on an expedition in the polar extremes. Normally anything other than white means a hazard such as a crevasse.

Fill your life with tiny and large adventurous moments.

Many abolitionists have yet to learn the ABC of woman's rights.

That God cannot lie, is no advantage to your argument, because it is no proof that priests can not, or that the Bible does not.

My aim is to spread more smiles than tears.

A photographer doesn't just copy reality, but communicates to others what he or she experiences.