Nora Roberts Quotes

I've got fabulous women friends that I kind of didn't have while I was married. I realized the great need for that when the marriage started to disintegrate.

Even though you're married, you're still individuals. You still have to grow and nurture your individuality.

As a southern woman, we often define ourselves by who we are with. But I wanted my life to be built differently.

Somewhere along the way, without me even noticing, I grew up Alex. For once, I couldn’t take advice from anyone around me about what I should or shouldn’t do. I couldn’t go running to mum and dad and I can’t compare my marriage to anybody else’s, we all follow our own rules.

I think we're all just doing our own thing and finding our own paths and I think we just work really hard. I don't personally know some of the Disney girls as well as I know some of the Nickelodeon girls, but I have run into them and talked to them and they're all really cool and I respect them and what they do and I'm just trying to do my own thing.

The most important thing I learned [from running] is that there is only one runner in this race, and that is me.

If it is difficult to know yourself as an individual, it seems to be more complex as a couple. So if you say, "Oh I like a person who is like this and that," you might take away the possibility of seeing the only one that might be right for you.

I raised you to be a thoroughbred. When thoroughbreds run, they wear blinders to keep their eyes focused straight ahead with no distractions, no other horses. They hear the crowd, but they don’t listen. They just run their own race. That’s what you have to do. Don’t listen to anyone comparing you to me or to anyone else. You just run your own race.

It's important to have your own space. I've never trusted people who do everything together. I call them "Kool-Aid Couples," because it's like they drank the same Kool-Aid and it's drugged them into constantly gazing into each other's eyes.

A girl is like a young tree, she said. You must stand tall and listen to your mother standing next to you. That is the only way to grow strong and straight. But if you bend to listen to other people, you will grow crooked and weak. You will fall to the ground with the first strong wind. And then you will be like a weed, growing wild in any direction, running along the ground until someone pulls you out and throws you away.

The obligation to amuse and instruct myself was entirely my own, and people who didn't know that were childish people, to be avoided if possible. Certainly not to be trusted.

No one can build his security upon the nobleness of another person. Two people, when they love each other, grow alike in their tastes and habits and pride, but their moral natures (whatever we may mean by that canting expression) are never welded. The base one goes on being base, and the noble one noble, to the end.

Slowly you become your own man.

Sometimes I think you'll be fine by yourself Cause a dream is a wish you make all alone; It's easy to feel like you don't need help, But it's harder to walk on your own.

The world in books seemed so much more alive to me than anything outside. I could see things I'd never seen before. Books and music were my best friends. I had a couple of good friends at school, but never met anyone I could really speak my heart to. We'd just make small talk, play soccer together. When something bothered me, I didn't talk with anyone about it. I thought it over all by myself, came to a conclusion, and took action alone. Not that I really felt lonely. I thought that's just the way things are. Human beings, in the final analysis, have to survive on their own.

What is it like being single? I like it! I like starting each day with a sense of possibility. And I'm optimistic, because everyday I get a little more desperate. And desperate situations yield the quickest results.

You must dare to disassociate yourself from those who would delay your journey... Leave, depart, if not physically, then mentally. Go your own way, quietly, undramatically, and venture toward Trueness at last.

Figuring things out for yourself is the only freedom anyone really has. Use that freedom.

Get used to me, I am not getting used to anyone.

Never waste jealousy on a real man: it is the imaginary man that supplants us all in the long run.

The more independent you are of him, the more interested he will be.

We were taught to be free-thinking, independent, to look at your goals. And that old saying, you could never go home was never true in my community. We always felt like we could go home.

I think that men think they need their man caves. They don't really do. They think they want them, and then the second they do get them and they have alone time and time away from the girl, and the girl is really cool with giving them alone time, then that's when they, or at least I, start to think, "So, why are you so cool with me being alone? What's wrong with me that you don't want to be with me every second."

Life choices and projects and photo shoots, I can't base them on anybody else but myself. I've done things where I'm like, "Do I want my dad to see this? I don't know!" But the best lesson I can teach my sisters, or any younger women, is "Do what YOU do. Don't follow me, follow you."

If you really want to live your life to the fullest and realize your greatest potential, you must be willing to run the risk of making some people mad. People may not like what you do, people may not like how you do it, but these people are not living your life. You are!