“The bottom line is, insults only hurt when they come from someone I respect.”

“Fear can only grow in darkness. Once you face fear with light, you win.”

“Writing is really just a matter of writing a lot, writing consistently and having faith that you’ll continue to get better and better. Sometimes, people think that if they don’t display great talent and have some success right away, they won’t succeed. But writing is about struggling through and learning and finding out what it is about writing itself that you really love.”

“A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself. He makes his failures certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.”

“No one can travel so far that he does not make some progess each day. So let us never give up. Then we shall move forward daily in the Lord’s way. And let us never despair because of our limited success. Even though it is so much less than we would like, our labour is not wasted when today is better than yesterday!”

“Participate in your dreams today. There are unlimited opportunities available with this new day. Take action on those wonderful dreams you’ve had in your mind for so long. Remember, success is something you experience when you act accordingly.”

“The bird dares to break the shell, then the shell breaks open and the bird can fly openly. This is the simplest principle of success. You dream, you dare and and you fly.”

“When you live your life by poor standards, you inflict damage on everyone who crosses your path, especially those you love.”

“The secret to success is constancy of purpose.”

“Lack of confidence, sometimes alternating with unrealistic dreams of heroic success, often leads to procrastination, and many studies suggest that procrastinators are self-handicappers: rather than risk failure, they prefer to create conditions that make success impossible, a reflex that of course creates a vicious cycle.”

“If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all.”

“The line between failure and success is so fine. . . that we are often on the line and do not know it.”

“As Aristotle said, ‘Excellence is a habit.’ I would say furthermore that excellence is made constant through the feeling that comes right after one has completed a work which he himself finds undeniably awe-inspiring. He only wants to relax until he’s ready to renew such a feeling all over again because to him, all else has become absolutely trivial.”

“I am struck by how sharing our weakness and difficulties is more nourishing to others than sharing our qualities and successes.”