When I say I am going to run three miles, I run five. With that mentality, it is actually difficult to lose.

There is no pain worse than not achieving a dream when it is your fault. If God did not want you to have it, that is one thing. But if you do not get what you desire because you are lazy, there is no pain worse than that.

On learning to swim: I'm too big to have some woman hold my stomach and say 'Now kick your feet.'

For me, the greater purpose of the story is just to illuminate some pattern of human truth.

Here I stand before you - brown. Color of the mountains Colossal as the earth Wrapped so deliciously within my own joy and misery Feathers of my wings paralyzed by the distance of my mind Here I stand before you, the color of the night Frozen by the potential of me.

I don't want to be an icon. I want to be an idea. I want to represent possibilities.

Never underestimate the pain of a person, because in all honesty, everyone is struggling. some people are better at hiding it than others.