Listening opens your mind, strengthens your sense of empathy and develops your ability to connect.

If you radiate a genuine confidence in your actions, others tend to believe in your goals as well. If you don't believe in your desired outcome, why should the rest of the world ?

If you focus on the reason why you should reach your goal you will put yourself in a more confident mindset.

A good way to empower yourself before a big moment is to write down 10 reasons why a person would want to say yes to your suggestion or ideas.

Meditation lowers the stress level and also strengthens your mental strength and focus, creativity and memory, qualities which are crucial to good conversations and building relationships.

If your thoughts, words and actions are congruent you come off to others as authentic and self-assured. Others will respond to you as you truly are.

Most people fail to be congruent because they don't want to show weakness. But typically best friends know your worst and most unattractive moments.

If you do what you are really passionate about you will be attractive to others.

Stop looking for validation from others. If you do things because you genuinely want them you free yourself up to pursue interests and hobbies that you may never have considered before.

Take back control of your self-image by worrying less about what others think of you and more about who you really are and how much you are enjoying life.

Everyone loves to talk - but few have perfected the art of listening.

Most people are eager to make a connection and talk too much, however it's in listening that you come to truly understand a person and what makes them tick.

Your most important and long-lasting relationship is the one that you have with yourself.

To accept the fact that not everyone will like you can be tremendously freeing. Rejection is rarely about your defects more often two persons simply don't mesh well. Then it's better to put time and energy into other relationships.

It makes her instantly feel something It’s easy to respond to It’s creative and/or humorous

The human life is all one thing, like a blade tracing loops on the ice: a little kid, a twenty-three-year-old infantry sergeant, a middle-aged writer knowing guilt and sorrow.

Bleak House is just the most astounding piece of work. There's huge, visionary poetry in it.

It is the greatest mistake to think that man is always one and the same. A man is never the same for long. He is continually changing. He seldom remains the same even for half an hour.

The biggest problem is startups in search of a problem. Chase what you're passionate about; you'll probably already have knowledge in the space.

I wanted to be Carrie Vaughn the awesome writer, not the chick who writes the 'Kitty' books.

January is the garbage can of movies in America, directly after all the Oscar contenders have been out.

I learned during my term and in the presidency that we should not discuss about assumptions or insinuations. If one day I have to do something against the U.S., the first one to get to know what I was going to do would be the president of the U.S.

I was a real skateboarder, not a gifted skateboarder. I represented that skateboarding was fun to do by being terrible at it.

That which the Fascists hate above all else, is intelligence.

Because when beauty awes you, you must halt and try to catch your breath and your staggered heart.

One can't help but be a bit melancholy when you see how the world has changed, and I don't mean that nostalgically.

Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses and disappointments; but let us have patience and we soon shall see them in their proper figures.

The openness of rural Nebraska certainly influenced me. That openness, in a way, fosters the imagination. But growing up, Lincoln wasn't a small town. It was a college town. It had record stores and was a liberal place.

Things gain meaning by being used in a shared experience or joint action.

Back in the 1500s, the culture that we had built in the West embraced multigenerational projects quite easily. Notre Dame. Massive cathedrals were not built over the course of a few years, they were built over a few generations. People who started building them knew they wouldn't be finished until their grandson was born.

They say follow your heart, but if your heart is in a million pieces which piece do you follow?

I operate by the seat of my pants.

Sometimes for a lot of new artists, they don't have a vision, really, or know what they want to say; it's kind of drawn out for them. But me, because I'm such a transcendental thinker, it's always like a journey and an adventure with each project. It's like going through a different doorway each time.

I am not a sexy woman, I'm not beautiful, I'm not a sex kitten, I don't flirt with people, yet I've been tagged more of sex symbol than women who truly are and I that's solely because I don't reveal too much: people are curious.

Taste is the only morality. Tell me what you like and I'll tell you what you are.

I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity.

But I still always felt the absence of a mother.

Actually, I wanted to act even when I was still playing football.

I went to see every angler on the bank to see how they were doing, to try to give them a few tips or whatever. But yeah, we had a lot of fun. It was definitely a good time and we're definitely going to do it again next year.