Therefore, your mistakes and your failures are blessings; opportunities for the best in parenting. And those who point out your mistakes are not your enemies, but the most valuable of friends.

If you manipulate, coerce, and bully your children, you will have no power at all. If you lead with humility, gentleness, and by example, you will need no power at all.

And part of growin’ up is learnin’ to see the world through other men’s eyes.

A man will be known by his books.

We are simply committing ourselves to paying attention to our life. We use meditation to help us in that attention process. We are not trying to become good meditators. We are trying to wake up.

After years of living with the coldest realities I still believe that one reaps what one sows and that to sow kindness is the best of all investments.

Solitude is independence.

Each country its cost analysis is going to be different. So what we are you seeing in Syria, for example, is different than what's going on in Jordan. The maps are being rewritten.

I was unrecognizable to myself; I saw my reflection in a window; I didn't know my own face.

Make mistakes; it's what you do about them that counts.

I have known Tavis Smiley since the 1980s, when we both worked at the same radio station in Los Angeles. He is smart, and he is a gentleman who has accorded me great respect both on and off the air.

If Hillary Clinton had won and if my people went out and protested, everybody would say, "Oh, that's a terrible thing."

I always write my novels with music (I don't listened to the music seriously.) Music seems to encourage me.

I like to organize. I have an opinion. I like to get stuff done.

From triumph to downfall there is but one step. I have noted that, in the most momentous occasions, mere nothings have always decided the outcome of the greatest events.