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.

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.

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

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

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

There are, as is known, insects that die in the moment of fertilization. So it is with all joy: life's highest, most splendid moment of enjoyment is accompanied by death.

When I went to college, I discovered the Sega console, and 'Sonic the Hedgehog' became very dear to me.

I'm in a great rage now, as I understand how many lives we have lost.

You can put me in the basement or the penthouse; it doesn't matter to me.

I've never considered being a cop. I could be a teacher, I could be a minister, a social worker or a professor. As long I don't have to see blood and see people die every day, if I could inspire or help in their lives, that's something I'd want to do.

I'm probably the most negative person around.

I think sometimes when you begin to examine things - like yourself - suddenly you can just freak out and not want to go any further.

My fiction-writing DNA shows in how I think about prose, how I think about the page, how I think nonfiction stories should work. And every piece of nonfiction I write, I want it to have fictional texture.

GIS started on mainframe computers; we could get one map every five to 10 hours, and if we made a mistake, it could take longer. In the early '90s, when people started buying PCs, we migrated to desktop software.

Whenever I wasn't working, I had my butt back in normal school.

I have the restaurant, too. I serve Southwest, barbecue.

I'm very lazy!

I'm absolutely strict about it. When I land, I put my watch right, and I don't care what I feel like, I will go to bed at half past eleven. If that means going to bed early or late, that's what I live by. As soon as you get there, live by that time.

We will all rise from the grave.

I was born in 1948, so I'm a '60s kid, and in the '60s everyone talked all the time, endlessly, about socialism versus capitalism, about political choices, ideology, Marxism, revolution, 'the system' and so on.

There are too many fawning entertainment shows out there and not one of them is making fun of it all.

We turn skeletons into goddesses and look to them as if they might teach us how not to need.

Poetry teaches us music, metaphor, condensation and specificity.

If I were not African, I wonder whether it would be clear to me that Africa is a place where the people do not need limp gifts of fish but sturdy fishing rods and fair access to the pond. I wonder whether I would realize that while African nations have a failure of leadership, they also have dynamic people with agency and voices.

And that Newman wasn't, and yet to me Pollock is just as radical and unlike Expressionism as Newman.

Only your real friends will tell you when your face is dirty.

I love to give. I've been a giver all my life.

It's pretty cool that people will pay for something even though they don't have to. It's totally different now to back in the day. Now you're paying for a record because you believe in the band. In the future that will be the only time people will pay for albums, because there's some kind of connection.

I have a career, I worked so hard for it.