Long

Never ever give up. Don't give up. Don't allow it to happen. If there's a concrete wall in front of you, go through it, go over it, go around it, but get to the other side of that wall.

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.

You are your own stories and therefore free to imagine and experience what it means to be human without wealth, without domination over others, without reckless arrogance, without fear of others unlike you.

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.

What most of us recognized in South Africa, at the very last moment, was just how much we needed one another. We realized that violent confrontation promised only destruction and a long life of shared misery.

We dare not squander our education. We dare not squander our integrity. We must be brave to think critically. We must be free to believe in ourselves.

College is something you complete. Life is something you experience. So don't worry about your grade, or your job, or your career. Here is the best piece of advice I can give you: Every day, once a day, give yourself a present.

When we experience our fear, when we say the words 'I am scared,' we have the choice to acknowledge that being scared is not who we are. It is not our identity. And while there is a part of us that is scared, there's also a part of us that isn't scared.

To be a good doctor, a good researcher, is to be one who can listen, assimilate and diagnose information from without, but can also listen and hear what is being said from within themselves.

You are smarter when you're in the company of smarter people than you. Fifty percent of my friends have to be from walks of life that are not directly related to my walk of life, and at least fifty percent of my friends are smarter than I am.

Ready, Fire, Aim. If you feel positive in your gut about your idea — do it. Don't get stuck in the limbo of 'Ready, Aim, Aim, Aim' and let someone else do the firing. Be there first!

Never give in to pessimism. Don't know that you can't fly, and you will soar like an eagle. Don't end up regretting what you did not do because you were too lazy or too frightened to soar. Be a bumblebee!