Authenticity

The elevation of appearance over substance, of celebrity over character, of short-term gain over lasting achievement is precisely what your generation needs to help end.

Follow your passion, stay true to yourself. Never follow someone else's path unless you're in the woods and you're lost and you see a path. Then by all means, you should follow that.

The most important thing in your life is to live your life with integrity and not to give in to peer pressure to try to be something that you're not, to live your life as an honest and compassionate person, to contribute in some way.

Really when I look back on it, I wouldn't change a thing. I mean, it was so important for me to lose everything because I found out what the most important thing is — to be true to yourself.

We push ourselves through the week to get to the weekend. We have become 2/7ths people, only really living 2 days out of the 7 in a week. Things can be different. We can become 7/7ths people. And thereby become whole.

Trust yourself. Dig deep down and ask yourselves, who do you want to be? Not what, but who.

You cannot authentically live anyone's life but your own. That is the deal life offers us.

Find allies rather than adorers. Adorers are people who fawn over you but never tell you when you screw up. Instead, seek out allies who are honest with you when you feel you are not living up to your potential.

When you work for other people, they do know what's best for them and for the company. And you should listen to them and be respectful. But they don't know what's best for you. Only you know that.

Your great education is what got you the interview, but it is who you truly are that will get you the job.

Who am I, really? All of us have easy public answers to the identity question. But we also know, deep inside, that these are just the superficial, transitory expressions of who we are.

I had fame and fortune but I was very unhappy. The harder I worked, the more famous I got, the bigger the hole in my heart became.