A lot of people do not muster the courage to live their dreams because they are afraid to die.

Our ability to handle life's challenges is a measure of our strength of character.

We are living in very challenging times. Pressured in the workplace and stressed out at home, people are trying to make sense of their lives.

Social media presents an opportunity for business people to connect and know each other prior to a phone call or email taking place.

The love of what you do, combined with your belief in what you do, will not determine your success. It will determine how hard you will work and how dedicated you will be to achieving it. Success just shows up from there.

Your customers are judging every aspect of every transaction and rating everything, from friendliness of people to ease of doing business to quality of product to service after the sale.

I graduated from high school in 1963. There were no computers, cell phones, Internet, credit cards, cassette tapes or cable TV.

My readers and my audiences have turned into my followers. They are more than interested in what I have to say in the subjects of sales, loyalty, attitude, networking, business social media, and becoming a trusted advisor.

Great people have great values and great ethics.

The buyer, the prospect, the customer expects you to have knowledge of their stuff, not just your stuff.

Management's job is to convey leadership's message in a compelling and inspiring way. Not just in meetings, but also by example.

Great salespeople are relationship builders who provide value and help their customers win.

Mighty proud I am that I am able to have a spare bed for my friends.

Saw a wedding in the church. It was strange to see what delight we married people have to see these poor fools decoyed into our condition.

Strange to see how a good dinner and feasting reconciles everybody.

As happy a man as any in the world, for the whole world seems to smile upon me!

The same way one tells a recipe, one tells a family history. Each one of us has our past locked inside.

What I find sad is that the New Age movement is primarily a commercial undertaking. But it is answering to a human need.

As a very young girl, I understood that the interior activities of the home are as significant as the exterior activities of society.

I am always interested in that relationship between outer reality and inner desire, and I think it is important to pay attention to the inner voice because it is the only way to discover your mission in life and the only way to develop the strength to break with whatever familial or cultural norms are preventing you from fulfilling your destiny.

What has never changed, what is always present and what is, in the end, what sustains us is that energy that I talk about in 'Like Water for Chocolate...' that loving energy. Without that, I wouldn't have had the strength to keep going and enjoy life.

There are still some natural forces that everybody understands. Technology and industry have distanced people from nature and magic and human values.

As a teacher I realize that what one learns in school doesn't serve for very much at all, that the only thing one can really learn is self-understanding, and this is something that can't be taught.

I can't speak for readers in general, but personally I like to read stories behind which there is some truth, something real and above all, something emotional. I don't like to read essays on literature; I don't like to read critical or rational or impersonal or cold disquisitions on subjects.

I cook. I walk. I go to the movies. I meditate.

Cooking is one of the strongest ceremonies for life. When recipes are put together, the kitchen is a chemical laboratory involving air, fire, water and the earth. This is what gives value to humans and elevates their spiritual qualities. If you take a frozen box and stick it in the microwave, you become connected to the factory.

Our decision to close on Sunday was our way of honoring God and of directing our attention to things that mattered more than our business.

I had to create some good work habits and attitude.

In the Great Depression, you bought something if you had the cash to buy it.

Nearly every moment of every day, we have the opportunity to give something to someone else - our time, our love, our resources.

I'm planning to be here forever, but I know at some point I'll probably have to give it up. If you live to 100, there's a very good chance you'll live forever. Because very few people die after 100.

The people are more important than the food. We want a person to be as successful as he can be, and it works the other way around, too.

I made my first white women friends in college; they loved me and were loyal to our friendship, but I understood, as they did, that they were white women and that whiteness mattered.

For in the end, freedom is a personal and lonely battle; and one faces down fears of today so that those of tomorrow might be engaged.

As long as the people don't fear the truth, there is hope. For once they fear it, the one who tells it doesn't stand a chance. And today, truth is still beautiful... but so frightening.

The experience of God, or in any case the possibility of experiencing God, is innate.

In South Korea, they believe that when you turn 60, you've become a baby again and the rest of your life should be totally about joy and happiness, and people should leave you alone, and I just think that that's the height of intelligence.

Don't wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any happiness you get you've got to make yourself.

I don't call myself a Buddhist. I'm a free spirit. I believe I'm here on earth to admire and enjoy it; that's my religion.

Well, I think indigenous peoples have ways of living on the Earth that they've had forever. And they've been overrun by organized religion, which has had a lot of money and power.

It is justice and respect that I want the world to dust off and put - without delay, and with tenderness - back on the head of the Palestinian child. It will be imperfect justice and respect because the injustice and disrespect have been so severe. But I believe we are right to try.

I have such respect for 'Democracy Now!'

Creation is a sustained period of bliss, even though the subject can still be very sad. Because there's the triumph of coming through and understanding that you have, and that you did it the way only you could do it. You didn't do it the way somebody told you to do it.

Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it.

If you want to have a life that is worth living, a life that expresses your deepest feelings and emotions and cares and dreams, you have to fight for it.

Women have to summon up courage to fulfill dormant dreams.

To me, the black black woman is our essential mother, the blacker she is the more us she is and to see the hatred that is turned on her is enough to make me despair, almost entirely, of our future as a people.

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.

'Thank you' is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding.

One of the triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement is that when you travel through the South today, you do not feel overwhelmed by a residue of grievance and hate.