The chilling truth is that his story could have been mine. The tragedy is that my story could have been his.

My mother is extraordinary; she's a superwoman, like so many other single mothers who are out there.

We're not products of our environments, we're products of our expectations.

The young men in our city are not problems to be solved. They are opportunities to be unleashed.

When it is time for you to leave this school, leave your job, or even leave this earth, you make sure you have worked hard to make sure it mattered you were even here.

Potential is universal, opportunity is not.

Life's impermanence, I realized, is what makes every single day so precious. It's what shapes our time here. It's what makes it so important than not a single moment be wasted.

The expectations that others place on us help us form our expectations of ourselves.

The choices we make about the lives we live determine the kinds of legacies we leave.

But really, where leadership is born and where leadership is really bred is.

The importance of education plays a huge role.

I thought you were going to— you’re standing under my window. Aren’t you supposed to climb up here or something?”“My ladder’s at home.

It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction.

My boyfriend and I broke up. He wanted to get married and I didn't want him to.

The more people are involved in a given task, the more potential agreements need to be negotiated to do anything, and the greater the transaction costs.

Accents are very sexy. American girls who speak French are very attractive to a Frenchman. Anything exotic or different is attractive.

Competition is a painful thing, but it produces great results.

It's that quirky kind of weekend feeling they write ridiculous sunny-day songs about. You know the ones--I'm sure they're on your iPod even though you'd never admit it.

There is no insurmountable solitude.

The road ahead of you is long, dark, and, I very much fear, bloodstained. I also very much fear that you will take us all down that road. But you must live to reach the end of it.