I was six when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength..."strongest wind cannot be seen."

It's both rebellion and conformity that attack you with success.

We are the kind of people who obsess over one word... but we have only one shot to get it right in concert. It was hard the first time I practiced with them. I was so nervous that my vocal chords were paralyzed for about a half-hour.

For unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be. I could only be me.

You should think about your character. Know where you are changing, how you will be changed, what cannot be changed back again.

She [my mother] said that if I listened to her, later I would know what she knew: where true words came from, always from up high, above everything else. And if I didn't listen to her, she said my ear would bend too easily to other people, all saying words that had no lasting meaning, because they came from the bottom of their hearts, where their own desires lived, a place where I could not belong.

And I remember wondering why it was that eating something good could make me feel so terrible, while vomiting something terrible could make me feel so good.