[Michelle Obama] was the hardest sell. And she never fully embraced being in the public spotlight, which is ironic, given how good she is.

You can’t let your failures define you. You have to let your failures teach you.

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

Keep exploring. Keep dreaming. Keep asking why. Don’t settle for what you already know. Never stop believing in the power of your ideas, your imagination, your hard work to change the world.

When ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance, you don't really have to do anything, you just let them talk.

Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail.

Change is never easy, but always possible.

Don’t ever let anybody tell you that your efforts don’t matter or that your voice doesn’t count. Don’t ever believe that you can’t make a difference. You have.

Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up.

Learning to stand in somebody else's shoes, to see through their eyes, that's how peace begins. And it's up to you to make that happen. Empathy is a quality of character that can change the world.

If somebody is different from you, that's not something you criticize, that's something that you appreciate.

We will never achieve freedom - not until the very end - but the fight can be so beautiful.

The only good thing about being frightened half to death, she thought, is that it makes me forget all about being seasick.

Old people really do have a secret though. You wanna know what it is? Luck.

I hurt easy, I just don't show it. You can hurt someone and not even know it.

Reliable data on the outsourcing of American jobs is sorely missing from the debate on globalization.

Your intent is important. You will pull a very deep power when you are working not just for yourself, but you are working for your enlightenment and to aid others in their enlightenment.

For order and a society to exist - and a basketball team is a society within itself - it needs discipline.

The raw materials of photography are light and time and memory.

When I used a woman in my films or wrote a woman into my film, I wanted her to be a central point and a motivating point or a catalyst to function in the film.

Starting writing is stressful and scary and hard, but also, it's just like going to the gym. You're just stiff and weird, and you can't do it as well.