Quotes

The biggest lesson from Africa was that life's joys come mostly from relationships and friendships, not from material things. I saw time and again how much fun Africans had with their families and friends and on the sports fields; they laughed all the time.

Community service has taught me all kinds of skills and increased my confidence. You go out there and think on your feet, work with others and create something from nothing. That's what life's all about.

When we're young we have a very clear vision of how life is supposed to be, and it all seems very neatly packaged.

Unfortunately, there are so many people who live their whole life in a place that is safe and protected and simple and they don't really have that strength inside to fly.

One of the things that frequently gets lost in descriptions of depression is that the depressed person often knows that it is a ludicrous condition to feel so disabled by the ordinary business of quotidian life.

I would have had an easier life if I were straight, but I would not be me. And I now like being myself better than the idea of being someone else, someone who, to be honest, I have neither the option of being nor the ability fully to imagine.

Most people imagine that resolving particular problems will make them happy. If only one had more money, or love, or success, then life would feel manageable. It can be devastating to realize the falseness of such tempered optimism.

A breakdown involves getting to the point at which your mental state prevents you from doing the normal things of your everyday life. I remember from my own experience that I was completely ambushed by mine.

Every stage of life longs for others. When one is young and eager, one aspires to maturity, and everyone older would like nothing better than to be young.

I was kind of a scaredy-cat as a kid, and I made a very deliberate decision at some point that I was not going to let fear rule my life or determine my experience. That wasn't so easily accomplished.

There is enormous shame around depression of any kind and at any time. And there's enormous social stigma attached to it, which we need to go on fighting. But I think that the sense of depression during pregnancy and early motherhood has been particularly stigmatized, that people especially feel that should be the happiest time of your life.

When I was born, the wisdom was that homosexuality was an illness; that it was caused largely by somebody's mother, and a distorted relationship with the mother. And now, as I live my life - married to a husband, with kids - it's an identity.

Now, it's not that I think that being gay is the most amazing, wonderful thing in the world, but I have a husband; I have a life; I have friends who I've met through this. It's who I am.

I've had a mental illness for nearly half my life, and I can no longer imagine myself without it. It seems less like something that happened to me than like part of who I am; some days, it is the thing about me, but it is always at least a thing about me.

As a little kid in the late 1960s, I was afraid of the world. Even if I didn't get caught in the draft that was sending American teenagers to Vietnam, there was always the possibility of a Soviet nuclear attack. I made constant escape plans and imagined a life going from port to port.

I had never touched a computer in my life before I came to Pixar.

Being a sci-fi geek myself and going to movies all my life, I came to the conclusion that there were really two camps of how robots have been designed. It's either the tin man, which is a human with metal skin, or it's an R2D2.

My life experience has made me realise what's important and what is not.

I think you grieve different elements, you grieve your wife who's gone, you grieve the fact she had cancer and you had to watch her die, you grieve the fact the life you built isn't going to be the same as the one going forward. All these different elements hit you at different times.

Until you go through a bereavement, you don't know how you will cope. What we have found out is that life is completely different. The foundations that you have been building all your life are knocked down.

Anything that raises any internal honesty about gay life is inherently suspect.

My father was a progressive farmer, and was always ready to lay aside an old plough if he could replace it with one better constructed for its work. All through life, I have ever been ready to buy a better plough.

I think a lot of people would rather have more control over their life than less.

My life is triage.

Most people tell you there are certain moments you should celebrate in life: for example, the weekend coming, so you should party on a Friday. Or your birthday or New Year's Eve. But what if you're excited about being alive every day? Can't you be in that celebratory state every moment you're not dead?