When an actress takes off her clothes onscreen but a nursing mother is told to leave, what message do we send about the roles of women?

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.

Your true friends are those who evaluate you by who you are as a person, and not by what you have or don't have.

Sacrifices are no sacrifices when they are repaid a thousand fold.

It is inconceivable that people are motivated solely or even mainly by external incentives.

George Orwell said, "Whoever controls the past controls the future," by which he meant that history is incredibly important in shaping the world view of the next generation of people.

Children can be happy when their parents are miserable. But a parent is never happier than her unhappiest child.

When moral courage feels that it is in the right, there is no personal daring of which it is incapable.

If your joy is derived from what society thinks of you, you're always going to be disappointed.

Alexander III of Macedon is known as Alexander the Great because he killed more people of more different kinds than any other man of his time.

Whenever truth stands in the mind unaccompanied by the evidence upon which it depends, it cannot properly be said to be apprehended at all.

If you’re not crazy there’s something wrong with you. Willie Nelson