“To the people who love you, you are beautiful already. This is not because theyre blind to your shortcomings but because they so clearly see your soul. Your shortcomings then dim by comparison. The...”

“Because I was more often happy for other people, I got to spend more time being happy. And as I saw more light in everybody else, I seemed to have more myself. (250)”

“Sometimes customizing is necessary because of an injury or the inability to do, for a short or long period, the kind of exercise you formerly did. When you're used to customizing for fun, doing it ...”

“A simple life is not seeing how little we can get by withthats povertybut how efficiently we can put first things first. . . . When youre clear about your purpose and your priorities, you can painl...”

“Sometimes youll hear, People dont change. This is true more often than it ought to be, but listen again: People dont change. It says dont, not cant. (316)”

“Our society on a whole is trained to see young women. There are proportionally far more of them on magazine covers, on TV, and in films than int the actual population. As a result, we have a citize...”

“I finally know the difference between pleasing and loving, obeying and respecting. It has taken me so many years to be okay with being different, and with being this alive, this intense. (xxvi)”

“Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence.Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance.Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence.Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance.”

“Birthdays could be such a bummer when you were older than the country you lived in.”

“It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.”

“She is one of those ladies who is more beautiful at sixty than she could possibly have been at twenty. (how I hope someone says that about me someday)!”

“You'll get younger not from what you read but from what you apply in your life. (192)”

“I have left orders to be awakened at any time during national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting.”

“What young people didnt know, she thought, lying down beside this man, his hand on her shoulder, her arm; oh, what young people did not know. They did not know that lumpy, aged, and wrinkled bodies...”

“Use all this life to make yourself a great writer, thoughtful and kind, slowly, surely over the years.”