“I was a keen observer and listener. I picked up on clues. I figured things out logically, and I enjoyed puzzles. I loved the clear, focused feeling that came when I concentrated on solving a problem and everything else faded out.”

When everyone at school is speaking one language, and a lot of your classmates’ parents also speak it, and you go home and see that your community is different -there is a sense of shame attached to that. It really takes growing up to treasure the specialness of being different.

There are no bystanders in this life.

I am an ordinary person who has been blessed with extraordinary opportunities and experiences. Today is one of those experiences.

Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see.

Don’t be shy about making a teacher of any willing party who knows what he or she is doing.

Pretending to be a princess is fun, but it is definitely not a career.

I do know one thing about me: I don’t measure myself by others’ expectations or let others define my worth.

Remember that no one succeeds alone. Never walk alone in your future paths.

You can’t dream unless you know what the possibilities are.

If your child marches to a different beat, a different drummer, you might just have to go along with that music. Help them achieve what’s important to them.

It really takes growing up to treasure the specialness of being different.

If I write a book where all I’ve ever experienced is success, people won’t take a positive lesson from it. In being candid, I have to own up to my own failures, both in my marriage and in my work environment.

Some people choose not to engage the battle and then don’t seek out that kind of success. And others do.

A role model in the flesh provides more than inspiration; his or her very existence is confirmation of possibilities one may have every reason to doubt, saying, “Yes, someone like me can do this.”

If the system is broken, my inclination is to fix it rather than to fight it. I have faith in the process of the law, and if it is carried out fairly, I can live with the results, whatever they may be.

I have never had to face anything that could overwhelm the native optimism and stubborn perseverance I was blessed with.

I thought about how easily we are all brainwashed by our society and culture to stop thinking and just assume by default that more money equals more success and more happiness, when ultimately happiness is really just about enjoying life.

I felt that I had to write. Even if I had never been published, I knew that I would go on writing, enjoying it and experiencing the challenge.

Pray inwardly, even if you do not enjoy it. It does good, though you feel nothing. Yes, even though you think you are doing nothing.

I do enjoy life, I really do. Especially if I wake up the next day.

Life is a gift. Have fun and crush it this week.

The trick to enjoy this, and see it as a part – of the process.

I was always too mature for my age – and not very happy. I had no young friends. I wish I could go back to those days. If I could only live it all again, how I would play and enjoy other girls. What a fool I was.

What more felicity can fall to creature, than to enjoy delight with liberty?