Conan O'Brien Quotes

the most terribly human moments - the ones we want to pretend never happened - are the very moments that make us who we are today. ... You are defined not by life's imperfect moments, but by your reaction to them.

There's so much shame involved in not being like everyone else. But I learned that the things that made me unique were good. Dealing with problems can be awful. But in the end I got positive results. I don't think I would have been a writer if I didn't have anxiety.

The great epochs of our life come when we gain the courage to rechristen our evil as what is best in us.

I think Ellenor is embarrassed and ashamed and has devoted all of her energy to the law and to helping other people get justice because it's too difficult for her to face her own struggle for justice.

You get tough when you grow up unloved. People described me as a boyish girl - rather shy, but I didn't show it. I had an attitude. I was rather wild. I lied a lot because I knew the alternative was to be punished. As I got older I realised I didn't have to lie any more and it was a nice feeling. I could be myself.

Certain stories we carry with us, events in our life, they define who we are. It's not a matter of getting over anything; we have to make the best of it.

I'm a small and normal girl, and stories like mine no one likes to tell. Fortunately so, because I wouldn't like to play myself.

'Hedwig' is not autobiographical, but what she goes through is clearly a big metaphor. She doesn't want to be what she is, but she comes to an understanding that what happened to her has actually made her whole.

I’ve always been a black sheep. That’s a hard thing to be until you find your calling in life. I was bullied a lot at school, probably because I was perceived to be different from everyone else.

Don't let yourself feel worthless: often through life you will really be at your worst when you seem to think best of yourself; and don't worry about losing your "personality," as you persist in calling it: at fifteen you had the radiance of early morning, at twenty you will begin to have the melancholy brilliance of the moon, and when you are my age you will give out, as I do, the genial golden warmth of 4 p.m.

The more our bodies fail us, the more naked and more demanding is the spirit, the more open and loving we can become if we are not afraid of what we are and of what we feel. I am not a phoenix yet, but here among the ashes, it may be that the pain is chiefly that of new wings trying to push through.

without my wounds, who was I? My scars were my face, my past was my life.

The Martyr finds her way to self-knowledge through pain, suffering, and surrender.

To break out of the chaos of my darkness Into a lucid day is all my will. My words like eyes in night, stare to reach A centre for their light: and my acts thrown To distant places by impatient violence Yet lock together to mould a path of stone Out of my darkness into a lucid day.

You think you're being broken but you're really being broken open...and that's where the healing happens, in those broken places...if you'll allow it.

I want to try to not be the child that had to go through too much too young. I want to be who I am now and not who I was then.

I've always felt there were aspects of me that were monstrous, and you can either hide from it or confront it, embrace it and understand that those are aspects that make you unique and define you and motivate you. You can either overwhelm or overcompensate for them -- but they truly define you as a human being...So that life became a question of either dealing with this monstrousness in one way or another...One finds a way to understand and make friends with that monster and understand that that's the very thing that makes you who you are. That's your emotional and spiritual fingerprint.

It will feel impossible; like you are dying inside this is your soul crying out for life. It may take everything you have; every ounce of will and strength. You will lose a part of yourself trying to save something essential and innocent. And when you have given everything, you will recover and you will be set free, and you will discover there was even more in you than you ever knew.

Your illness is not your identity. Your chemistry is not your character.

I know that life is a journey I must accept and that pain and confusion are temporary. I know that if I follow my heart, it will lead me where I belong.

Be proud of your scars. They have everything to do with your strength, and what you've endured. They're a treasure map to the deep self.

When a man no longer confuses himself with the definition of himself that others have given him, he is at once universal and unique.

Sometimes our strengths are also our weaknesses. Sometimes to be strong you have to first be weak. You have to share your burdens; you have to lean on other people while you face your problems and yourself.

It is the measure of my individual struggle from darkness toward some measure of light.

Like the lotus flower that is born out of mud, we must honor the darkest parts of ourselves and the most painful of our life’s experiences, because they are what allow us to birth our most beautiful self.