Wisdom

I see the otherness of the other, which appeals to me. In fact, it is the otherness of the other that makes me who I am.

There is more in any human being to celebrate than to denigrate.

Replace cynicism with its old-fashioned antidote, skepticism.

Don't believe them when they tell you how bad you are and how terrible your ideas are, but also, don't believe them when they start telling you how wonderful you are and how great your ideas are. Just believe in yourself and believe in your work and you'll do just fine.

You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.

The most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.

Wealth isn't measured in bling and Bentleys. It's measured in the richness of the human spirit. It's measured not in what we take from this world, but what we give to it.

If you have to be perfect, if you have to make a hundred on the test, you may not take the test.

The most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.

Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.

There is nothing, believe me, more satisfying, more gratifying than true adulthood. The adulthood that is the span of life before you. The process of becoming one is not inevitable. Its achievement is a difficult beauty, an intensely hard-won glory.

I am a teller of stories and therefore an optimist, a believer in the ethical bend of the human heart, a believer in the mind's disgust with fraud and its appetite for truth, a believer in the ferocity of beauty. So, from my point of view, I see your life as already artful, waiting, just waiting and ready for you to make it art.