“That's the way it is. If you believe in something your very belief renders you unqualified to do it. Your earnestness will come across. Your passion will show. Your enthusiasm will make everyone nervous. And your naivety will irritate. Which means that you will become suspect. Which means you will be prone to disillusionment. Which means that you will not be able to sustain your belief in the face of all the piranha fish which nibble away at your idea and your faith, 'till only the skeleton of your dream is left. Which means that you have to become a fanatic, a fool, a joke, an embarrassment. The world - which is to say the powers that be - would listen to your ardent ideas with a stiff smile on its face, then put up impossible obstacles, watch you finally give up your cherished idea, having mangled it beyond recognition, and after you slope away in profound discouragement it will take up your idea, dust it down, give it a new spin, and hand it over to someone who doesn't believe in it at all.”

“I wonder where you got that idea from? I mean, the idea that it's feeble to change your mind once it's made up. That's a wrong idea, you know. Make up your mind about things, by all means - but if something happens to show that you are wrong, then it is feeble not to change your mind, Elizabeth. Only the strongest people have the pluck to change their minds, and say so, if they see they have been wrong in their ideas.”

“You have this novel idea of the world, like it’s made up of ladder hunting and test taking and framed plaques, all of which mean nothing to your current position. I know enough to know that you are dumb enough to believe in your ability, and that my friend is why you are given the opportunities to rise.”

“Your ego identity, the attachment to the bogus idea you have of yourself prevents you from expressing your authentic talent and who you truly are. This attachment makes you feel afraid of what other people may think of you, of how they will react. They may judge, tease or even leave you. Yet the obstacle is not other people. It is your idea of them, which comes from the bogus idea you have of yourself. Letting go of this idea is the only way for expressing your authentic talent. In this way you will become who you truly are, and other people will also do the same.”

“What counts, in the long run, is not what you read; it is what you sift through your own mind; it is the ideas and impressions that are aroused in you by your reading. It is the ideas stirred in your own mind, the ideas which are a reflection of your own thinking, which make you an interesting person”

“your handwriting. the way you walk. which china pattern you choose. it's all giving you away. everything you do shows your hand. everything is a self portrait. everything is a diary.”