Laurie Halse Anderson Quotes

We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it's our job to invent something better.

Your circumstances do not determine what your life will be; they reveal what kinds of images you have chosen up until now.

I mean, I think we're put here on earth to make your own destiny, to begin with. I don't think there's anything you can do this way or that way to change anything.

No one can occupy your generosity except you. Who can occupy your patience when impatience roars through you? Who except you can choose not to act with judgment when all of your thoughts are judgmental? Your life is yours to live, no matter how you choose to live it. When you do not think about how you intend to live it, it lives you.

The knowledge that we are responsible for living the life we have is our most powerful tool.

On some level, we as human beings can be who we want to be.

I've always felt that life is a novel, and part of it is written for you, and part of it is written by you. It's up to you to write the ending, ultimately.

I believe that you are not stuck with a pre-destiny. I believe that there is ways to see all these things that are laid down in front of you and where you belong and to smack yourself in the face when you realize that you've strayed off your path and get back to where your path is.

My grand uncle was a traditional priest, and he would always say to me as a kid, 'We stand in our own light,' which essentially for him meant we were entirely responsible for a lot of what happens to us and for the ways in which our lives play out.

In a larger sense, we all write our own destiny.

Who do you want to be: the radical man who can make a choice in one second, or the man who never takes decisions? That's the question: who's the best? Actually, there is no best.

Decide what to go be and be it.

I think it's important to live your life the way you want to live it. Don't live your life in fear.

Others do not define you - you define yourself through your words and actions.

You choose who you want to be.

First, recognize that you are not a sheep who will be satisfied with only a few nibbles of dry grass or with following the herd as they wander aimlessly, bleating and whining, all of their days. Separate yourself now from the multitude of humanity so that you will be able to control your own destiny. Remember that what others think and say and do need never influence what you think and say and do.

I look at myself as a product of my choices, not a victim of my circumstances.

We and we alone have the power to change our lives, and we can choose to do so at any moment.

Destiny is not a strange power which determines what shall happen to me. It is myself as given, formed by nature, history, and myself. My destiny is the basis of my freedom; my freedom participates in shaping my destiny.

...even the richest personality is nothing before he has chosen himself, and on the other hand even what one might call the poorest personality is everything when he has chosen himself; for the great thing is not to be this or that but to be oneself, and this everyone can be if he wills it.

We are all affected by our pasts, but it is within our power not to let what we have done to dictate what we will do.

You can be whoever you want to be, you just have to want it bad enough.

I am the me I choose to be.

I cannot be other than what I am, and I am the choices of all my days.

We are not the person other people wish we were. We are who we decide to be.