Be Royal in your Own Fashion: Act like a King to be treated

You have the power to think differently about who you are. You have the ability to turn off the critical voice inside of you. That's not you. That's coming from the culture. That's coming from the outside of you. You've internalized the voice of your parents, your teachers, your friends.

I have an argument that to master any field, it's simple: it's a function of time. How much you devote yourself to the process, how much experience you get, how much you're willing to expand your limits, how willing you are to develop your own style. If you're willing to put 10,000 hours, something amazing is going to happen.

Your unhappiness is a way of speaking to you, it's telling you something isn't right.

All great leaders since Moses have known that a feared enemy must be crushed completely. (Sometimes they have learned this the hard way.) If one ember is left alight, no matter how dimly it smolders, a fire will eventually break out. More is lost through stopping halfway than through total annihilation: The enemy will recover, and will seek revenge. Crush him, not only in body but in spirit.

I often daydream about the future, thinking of the world in 100, 200 years, imagining what it looks like, feels like. I hope that my books are like ghosts that will inhabit this future.

I think it comes in cycles for Brandy [Burre] and for many women. You want to take care of your home, making it as good as possible for your kids and for yourself, and then eventually you feel trapped and you want to break out of that. You want to be someone else and you want the world to look at you as something else. Eventually, you come back again. The cycles are very much a part of her life.