“Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that.”

What happens when people open their hearts? They get better.

And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in.

I’m a writer. I don’t support any war. That’s my principle.

No matter how far you travel, you can never get away from yourself.

Whatever it is you’re seeking won’t come in the form you’re expecting.

I think you still love me, but we can’t escape the fact that I’m not enough for you.

Life is not like water. Things in life don’t necessarily flow over the shortest possible route.

I had no ambition to be a writer because the books I read were too good, my standards were too high.

Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions.

Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.

Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life and it’d lose even its imperfection.

Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who’s in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It’s like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven’t seen in a long time.

Concentration is one of the happiest things in my life.

I want you always to remember me. Will you remember that I existed, and that I stood next to you here like this?

Among the many values in life, I appreciate freedom most.

I dream. Sometimes I think that’s the only right thing to do.

Wearing a hijab never made me feel any more conservative – it made me feel safe. Then, after 9/11, I became the butt of a joke on the playground, so I stopped wearing it. Kids can be really cruel when you’re the only black girl in your Girl Scout troop.

I feel like when you say ‘activist,’ you have to have so much clarity, and I don’t always necessarily have so much clarity on how I want to help others, I just have this weird, deep urge to help other people. I’m trying to let God guide my body and use it as whatever kind of vehicle or vessel it needs to be.

I like my visuals to feel like movies.

I just sing what I’m feeling at the time and hope my fans will like that and appreciate that.

Kids will invest more, when they feel they’re being invested in.

But as I’ve said, failure is a feeling long before it’s an actual result. And for me, it felt like that’s exactly what she was planting—a suggestion of failure long before I’d even tried to succeed.

We must act out passion before we can feel it.

The antisemites who called themselves patriots introduced that new species of national feeling which consists primarily in a complete whitewash of one’s own people and a sweeping condemnation of all others.