Getting rid of everything unpleasant instead of learning to put up with it. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them … But you don't do either. Neither suffer nor oppose. You just abolish the slings and arrows. It's too easy.

And I learned that are troubles Of more than one kind Some come from ahead And some come from behind.

I love my life and it takes every step to get to where you are, and if you are happy, then God bless the hard times it took you to get there. No life is without them, so what are yours, and what did you do with the lessons? That is the only way to live.

I failed, many times in my life. One failure that I always remember was when my second book was rejected by 36 publishers. Many years later, I watched HuffPost come alive

Not all that have fallen are vanquished.

For when a man of high degree meets with adversity, he feels the strangeness of his fallen state more keenly than a sufferer of long standing.

Sometimes life makes you older than your age.

Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat; the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle.

I talk with the authority of failure.

When kids run up to me and ask, 'What happened?' I just lean over and whisper, 'Cigarettes.' And once I was in a car and this girl at traffic lights was giving me the eye. She could only see my head, so I decided to do a 360 in the car seat to freak her out. Her face was like, 'Whoa, what is going on?' She sped off really quickly.

The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.

But I think my mistakes became the chemistry for my miracles. I think that my tests became my testimonies.