The way to choose happiness is to follow what is right and real and the truth for you.

Books showed me there were possibilities in life, that there were actually people like me living in a world I could not only aspire to but attain. Reading gave me hope. For me, it was the open door.

I knew there was a way out. I knew there was another kind of life because I had read about it. I knew there were other places, and there was another way of being.

Your true passion should feel like breathing; it’s that natural.

Whatever someone did to you in the past has no power over the present. Only you give it power.

People never fail to amaze me. They face the unimaginable with a shot of grace and a rush of adrenaline; they steel their nerves; they summon their cool or anger or faith or whatever it takes to pull them through, and they go on to live another day.

You only have to believe that you can succeed, that you can be whatever your heart desires, be willing to work for it, and you can have it.