“The moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too … raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.”

Higher forces must be experienced directly, and that takes effort. That means you'll face the same stark choice I did: demand proof that you'll never receive, or use the tools in the face of your doubts. When I stopped thinking and focused on the tools, my reward was life changing faith.

It’s a paradox; only when you desire fear, will you be able to take action in its presence—which is what courage consists of.

Fear is almost always linked to an image you have of something terrible happening in the future. To develop courage, you have to give up this illusion of future certainty.

There’s a hidden, inner strength that you cannot find unless you push yourself through adversity.

The Comfort Zone is supposed to keep your life safe, but what it really does is keep your life small.

A few rare individuals refuse to live limited lives. They drive through tremendous amounts of pain—from rejections and failures to shorter moments of embarrassment and anxiety. They also handle the small, tedious pain required for personal discipline, forcing themselves to do things we all know we should do.

Most of us choose avoidance instead. As a result, we don’t live up to our potential, never becoming fully ourselves.

The more intense the pain—and the more aggressively you move into it—the more energy you’ll create.

When it came to political power, blacks need not apply. Add to this steaming stew the growing tensions over the Vietnam War and the movement for civil rights, and you had plenty of elements to fire the imagination of a novice journalist.

Sometimes crying is the only way your eyes speak when your mouth cant explain how broken your heart is.

We allow people to be creative. We set a direction, we set the vision, we set the strategy, but within that framework, we allow our people to be as creative as they want to be.

People always ask me, 'I don't know how you could watch that, how that affects you,' and I just tell them, 'I went through it in real life, so it's like pilots watching a 'Top Gun' movie or cyclists watching a bicycle movie,' something like that.

The only crime I'm guilty of is being a young black woman.

If you have a good self-esteem, you can be generous, you can give back and you can be productive in the world.

Beliefs drive behaviors and self-limiting beliefs lead to self-defeating behaviors.  Believe in yourself and your abilities.

Obama doesn't run around wearing a Carrie Bradshaw-esque nameplate necklace that says 'Socialist.' But his policies, actions, words, background and associations speak louder than any ID necklace ever could.

Any human being has private thoughts.

I think theatre at its best looks into the dark corners; clearly, my dark corners are full of doom.

I like really bad T.V.; it's a problem. Love me some reality.

For some odd reason, the expression 'death of a poet' always sounds somewhat more concrete than 'life of a poet.'

I was 9 years old, and this was - well, whenever it was, they paid a thousand bucks. I thought I was going to be rich forever! But I had no thought I would be an actor at that point.

We have 200 trillion cells, and the outcome of each of them is almost 100 percent genetically determined. And that's what our experiment with the first synthetic genome proves, at least in the case of really simple bacteria. It's the interactions of all those separate genetic units that give us the physiology that we see.

In youth the days are short and the years are long. In old age the years are short and day's long.

It has always been a dream of mine to put a play on film.

Concerning great things one should either be silent or speak loftily.

Loss of empathy might well be the most enduring and deep cutting scar of all the silent blade of an unseen enemy tearing at our hearts and stealing more than our strength.

Directing is very close to choreography; you deal with space, time, emotions, lighting, making beautiful images.

A minority government can't govern without support from other parties.

The mind is the limit. As long as the mind can envision the fact that you can do something, you can do it, as long as you really believe 100 percent.

Whether it's digital or physical, a pencil or a pen: line work. Humans are making things. And out of that comes the entire designed world we live within.

Jesus' love for His children continues to be the greatest love story of all time.

All the strength you need is inside you.