“If I were to say, ‘God, why me?’ about the bad things, then I should have said, ‘God, why me?’ about the good things that happened in my life.”

I take the good with the bad, and I try to face them both with as much calm and dignity as I can muster.

We must reach out our hand in friendship and dignity both to those who would befriend us and those who would be our enemy.

The ideal attitude is to be physically loose and mentally tight.

In America you’re conditioned to regard everything as a contest. You have to make the Ten Best Dressed List, win this, win that. It drives me nuts sometimes. Who cares, for Christ’s sake?

Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome.

Let me put it this way: I think Republicans tend to keep the ball in play, Democrats go for broke.

It’s an abnormal world I live in. I don’t belong anywhere. It’s like I’m floating down the middle. I’m never quite sure where I am.

You learn about equality in history and civics, but you find out life is not really like that.

Always have the situation under control, even if losing. Never betray an inward sense of defeat.

I know I could never forgive myself if I elected to live without humane purpose, without trying to help the poor and unfortunate, without recognizing that perhaps the purest joy in life comes with trying to help others.

I have always tried to be true to myself, to pick those battles I felt were important. My ultimate responsibility is to myself. I could never be anything else.

We must believe in the power of education. We must respect just laws. We must love ourselves, our old and or young, our women as well as our men.

I don’t want to be remembered for my tennis accomplishments. That’s no contribution to society. Tennis was purely selfish; that was for me.

Every time you win, it diminishes the fear a little bit. You never really cancel the fear of losing; you keep challenging it.

My humanity, in common with all of God’s children, gives the greatest flight to my full range of my possibilities.

It doesn’t have to glitter to be gold.

I’m good for some things, bad for a lot of things.

Yet I also believe that when you do unto others, blessings come to you as well. So if you don’t have a friend, be a friend. If you are having a bad day, make someone else’s day. If your feelings are hurt, heal those of another.

Nothing is more confusing than people who give good advice but set a bad example.

If your sanity requires you to talk less and feel more, so be it. You are not a bad person for not entertaining everyone.

The gratification comes, for me, in the doing of it. And once I’ve done it, I can’t do anything about it if it’s good or if it’s bad.

And I’ve been hurt hurt bad. I might be just twenty-six, but I’m an old woman in disguise twenty-six goin’on sixty-five.

Each and every bad seed counts, for even if they don’t survive or grow too beautifully, a bad seed allows you to re-evalutate the others and appreciate them even more.

There is a strong tendency to get used to and accept very bad things that would be shocking if seen with fresh eyes.