When you run a race, you hurt your ability to compete when you turn your head to look at the competition chasing you, you lose a step physically and psychologically. Run the race always stretching to do your best, imitations will come in last, no one can catch an original.

The secret to being successful is to find a way to bring yourself through, even in your stories. People are looking for the essence of your truth. When you can bring your own truth to it, that's when it works.

A friend of mine says that perfection is a road, not a destination.

This whole celebrity-fame thing is interesting. I'm the same person I always was. The only difference between being famous and not being famous is that people know who you are.

Books were my pass to personal freedom. I learned to read at age three, and soon discovered there was a whole world to conquer that went beyond our farm in Mississippi.

Joy is a sustained sense of well-being and internal peace - a connection to what matters.

When you surrender and stop resisting and stop trying to change that which you can't change, but be in the moment, be fully open to the blessings you've already received and those that are yet to come and stand in that space of gratitude ... and look at where you are and how far you've come and what you've accomplished - when you can claim THAT and SEE that, the literal vibration of your life will change.