I liked museums but I wanted to be a dancer, I wanted to go into performing arts, or be a writer.

It's really hard when you read literature in a language that's not your own. There are all these cultural references you have to be born into that particular language to get.

For me, the more I understand the story of others, the greater I am able to learn and help other people.

Sometimes the mere connection we make with each other can change people's lives. It doesn't have to be something big. The mere fact that you're interested in them makes them happy.

I think every person has a unique story to tell and we each have the different life events that happen to us and sometimes we may feel sympathetic toward a certain aspect of that life event.

It's hard to choose the right word, the right line. This Body Mystery is a small book, but it took me over ten years.

I tried to write poems in rhyme. I tried writing songs. Sometimes I jotted down a thought. I would keep a log of spontaneous thoughts.

I read a lot when I was in school in the United States, and even though writing in English is very difficult for me, I wrote in journals.

Art is really about how you capture different things you see around you and bring them into forms and words and shapes and meaning.

You have to experiment with different mediums and things around you [making art].

This is my first collaboration [with Mary Hamill] so I'm going to learn how it's going to work.

I don't need encouraging. I do well enough on my own.

Choose to experience peace rather than conflict.

I do devotion in the morning. I pray and I read the word.

There was never a nation that became great until it came to the knowledge that it had nowhere in the world to go for help.

I don't know anybody who does what I do. I'm very underground.

You can use an eraser on the drafting table or a sledge hammer on the construction site.

You've got to be willing to lose everything to gain yourself.

Being the first woman speaker and breaking the marble ceiling is pretty important. Now it's time to move on.

The easiest and simplest thing that any one can do to make their car safer, more gas efficient, whatever - check the tire pressure.

King old ladies assure us that cats are often the best judges of character. A cat will always to to a good man, they say.