top of page
Below are my favorite statements on the secrets of life and my reactions to them.
What are yours?
​
"The big secret in life is there is no secret. Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure. "
Oprah Winfrey
My response to Oprah
​
"The secret of getting ahead is getting started."
Mark Twain
"For a performance at the White House in 2009, they asked me to do something from In the Heights, but I had 16 bars on Alexander Hamilton. And I was like,"How can I not to do this very American-themed thing at the first poetry event at the White House? The opportunity was there, and I was going to try this new thing instead of doing something that I knew worked."
Lin-Manuel Miranda
My response to Mark Twain
My response to Lin-Manuel Miranda
"Everyone wants to be appreciated, so if you appreciate someone, don't keep it a secret."
Mary Kay Ash
"Some people ask the secret of our long marriage. We take time to go to a restaurant two times a week. A little candlelight, dinner, soft music and dancing. She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays."
Henny Youngman
My response to Mary Kay Ash
My response to Henny Youngman
"If you are careful with people, they will offer you part of themselves. That is the big secret."
Eve Arnold
"The time is always right to do what is right."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
My response to Martin Luther King, Jr.
My response to Eve Arden
"The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age."
Lucille Ball
My response to Lucille Ball
"What I lack in talent, I compensate with my willingness to grind it out. That's the secret of my life. "
Guy Kawasaki
My response to Guy Kawasaki
"The best music is essentially there to provide you something to face the world with."
Bruce Springsteen
My response to the Boss
"Don't avoid extremes, and don't choose any one extreme. Remain available to both the polarities - that is the art, the secret of balancing."
Rajneesh
My response to Rajneesh
"I know nothing of God or the Devil. I have never seen a vision nor learned a secret that would damn or save my soul."
Anne Rice
My response to Anne Rice
"Sometimes it's the journey that teaches you a lot about your destination."
Drake
​
"I think I’ve discovered the secret of life – you just hang around until you get used to it."
Charles Schulz
"The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that, you're in control of your life. If you don't, life controls you."
Tony Robbins
"I'm no expert. I have no psychic powers, and I sure don't possess any secret wisdom. I'm just Janet. I have strengths, weaknesses, fears, happiness, sadness. I experience joy and I experience pain. I'm highly emotional. I'm very vulnerable."
Janet Jackson
"The secret to success is good leadership, and good leadership is all about making the lives of your team members or workers better."
Tony Dungy
"I usually get my stuff from people who promised somebody else that they would keep it a secret."
Walter Winchell
My response to Drake
My response to Charles Schulz
My response to Tony Robbins
My response to Janet Jackson
​
My response to Tony Dungy
My response to Walter Winchell
"Patience is the secret to good food."
Gail Simmons
My response to Gail Simmons
"All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything. "
Swami Vivekananda
My response to Swami Vivekanabda
"The secret of successful managing is to keep the five guys who hate you away from the four guys who haven't made up their minds."
Casey Stengel
My response to Casey Stengel
"My greatest beauty secret is being happy with myself. I don't use special creams or treatments - I'll use a little bit of everything. It's a mistake to think you are what you put on yourself. I believe that a lot of how you look is to do with how you feel about yourself and your life. Happiness is the greatest beauty secret."
Tina Turner
"The secret of all victory lies in the organization of the non-obvious."
Marcus Aurelius
"In the madness, you have to find calm."
Lupita Nyong'o
My response to Marcus Aurelius
My response to Lupita Nyong'o
My response to Tina Turner
"There's always failure. And there's always disappointment. And there's always loss. But the secret is learning from the loss, and realizing that none of those holes are vacuums."
Michael J. Fox
My response to Michael J Fox
"Perseverance, secret of all triumphs."
Victor Hugo
My response to Victor Hugo
"The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made."
Groucho Marx
My response to Groucho
“The secret of life is knowing what you want and asking for it.”
Lailah Gifty Akita
My response to Lailah Gifty Akita
"You've got to ask! Asking is, in my opinion, the world's most powerful - and neglected - secret to success and happiness."
Percy Ross
My response to Percy Ross
"I feel like my secret magic trick that separates me from a lot of my peers is the bravery to be vulnerable and truthful and honest."
Katy Perry
My response to Katy Perry
"I don't ever know where I'm going. Because one of the wonderful things about writing, which is different than working in programming, you don't need to know. You could just write and discover where you're going. And it's a great deal of fun."
Walter Mosley
My response to Walter Mosley
My response to Norman Rockwell
"The secret to so many artists living so long is that every painting is a new adventure. So, you see, they're always looking ahead to something new and exciting. The secret is not to look back."
Norman Rockwell
"The human body experiences a powerful gravitational pull in the direction of hope. That is why the patient's hopes are the physician's secret weapon. They are the hidden ingredients in any prescription."
Norman Cousins
"But the real secret to lifelong good health is actually the opposite: Let your body take care of you."
Deepak Chopra
My response to Norman Cousins
My response to Deepak Chopra
"Being your authentic self is the ultimate secret to happiness in life."
Sheri Fink
My response to Sheri Fink
"The secret to modern life is finding the measure in time management. I have two kids, career and I travel, and I don't think my life is any different than most couples. The most valuable commodity now for many people is time and how to parcel that out."
Hugh Jackman
My response to Hugh Jackman
"When you love and accept yourself, when you know who really cares about you, and when you learn from your mistakes, then you stop caring about what people who don't know you think." Beyonce
My response to Beyonce
"What we call the secret of happiness is no more a secret than our willingness to choose life."
Leo Buscaglia
My response to Leo Buscalia
"It's funny how it's the little things in life that mean the most
Not where you live, what you drive or the price tag on your clothes
There's no dollar sign on a peace of mind, this I've come to know."
Zac Brown Band
My response to Zac Brown Band
"A secret at home is like rocks under tide."
Dinah Craik
My response to Dinak Craik
"The secret is not to give up hope. It's very hard not to because if you're really doing something worthwhile I think you will be pushed to the brink of hopelessness before you come through the other side."
George Lucas
My response to George Lucas
​
"I am sometimes a fox and sometimes a lion. The whole secret of government lies in knowing when to be the one or the other."
Napoleon Bonaparte
My response to Napoleon
"Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can."
Danny Kaye
My response to Danny Kaye
"I always beat the sun up in the morning. It's the secret to why I'm double trouble."
Al Sharpton
"People look around you, the signs are everywhere. You've left it for somebody other than you to be the one to care."
Jackson Browne
My response to Jackson Browne
"If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from that person's angle as well as from your own."
Henry Ford
"Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be."
Grandma Moses
My response to Grandma Moses
My response to Henry Ford
"If music be the food of love, play on."
William Shakespeare
My response to Shakespeare
"If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded."
Maya Angelou
My response to Maya Angelou
"I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer."
Jim Carrey
My response to Jim Carrey
"The only thing I knew how to do was to keep on keepin' on..."
Bob Dylan
My response to Bob Dylan
My response to Michael Jordan
"I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."
Michael Jordan
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
My response to the President
"The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for the rest of your life. And the most important thing is, it must be something you cannot possibly do."
Henry Moore
​
"We do not want riches. We want peace and love."
Red Cloud
My response to Henry Moore
My response to Red Cloud
"The most important thing is to enjoy your life—to be happy—it's all that matters."
Audrey Hepburn
My response to Audrey Hepburn
"I'm laughing because I know the secret of life. And the secret of life is that I have validated my existence. I know that I am worth more than my house, my bank account, or any physical thing."
Carlos Santana
My response to Carlos Santana
"He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
My response to Ralph Waldo Emerson
"In terms of my own writing, I only think of trying to get the work done. If I don't write it down, it's stuck in my brain. That is how I think of legacy - I've got to get it out of my head or out of my heart, because no one will do it for me."
Chance the Rapper
"I beg. I call. I badger. I cajole. Part of the secret is everyone has fun and that's really motivating."
Katie Couric
My response to Chance the Rapper
My response to Katie Couric
"All of life is a dispute over taste."
Nietzsche
​
"Maybe I don't have to be good but I can try to be
At least a little better than I've been so far."
Avett Brothers
The five stages - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance - are a part of the framework that makes up our learning to live with the one we lost. They are tools to help us frame and identify what we may be feeling. But they are not stops on some linear timeline in grief.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
​
My response to the Avett Brothers
My response to Elisabeth Kubler Ross
Acceptance is not love. You love a person because he or she has lovable traits, but you accept everybody just because they're alive and human.
Albert Ellis
My response to Albert Ellis
My response to Albert Ellis
If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.
Mother Teresa
My response to Mother Teresa
My response to Mother Teresa
"It's very easy for me to say what success is. I think success is connecting with an audience who understands you and having a dialogue with them. I think success is continuing to push yourself forward creatively and not sort of becoming a caricature of yourself."
Lena Dunham
My response to Lena Dunham
"The truth is: Belonging starts with self-acceptance. Your level of belonging, in fact, can never be greater than your level of self-acceptance, because believing that you're enough is what gives you the courage to be authentic, vulnerable and imperfect."
Brene Brown
My response to Brene Brown
"If I am to truly become an autonomous woman, then I must take over that role of being my own guardian."
Elizabeth Gilbert
My response to Elizabeth Gilbert
​
bottom of page