Quotes

When I realised I was transgender I was so afraid of what my transition would do to everyone else in my life and how they would react to it and would I be rejected?

What mom cares about most is that I'm happy, healthy and enjoying my life.

Until I really accepted this about myself and got over any of my own transphobia that I had, I really felt like I wouldn't be accepted. I thought I would ruin my life.

The saddest thing in life is wasted talent and the choices you make will shape your life forever.

I had a project for my life which involved 10 years of wandering, then some years of medical studies and, if any time was left, the great adventure of physics.

Being a third-generation Mexican-American and speaking English exclusively, I heard Spanish spoken by my relatives all my life, especially when they didn't want me to understand what they were talking about.

People come to Portland, many of them for the quality of life. They love the physical space here. And yet every year, people climbing the mountain get killed by avalanches.

I am a control freak, but not when I travel. For some reason when I travel, I am able to surrender more than in my real life. I am able to let go. I think it's why I like it so much.

My grandmother, who passed away at the beginning of November, had a core adage in her life that 'life is not about what happens to you but about what you do with what happens to you.' She recently had been cajoling me and challenging me to do more with my life. To lead more of a purposefully public life.

I have never thought of my life as being an enigma.

I lead a multi-faith life.

I hope telling stories though 'Making a Difference' - as in my academic work and nonprofit work - will help me to live my grandmother's adage of 'Life is not about what happens to you, but about what you do with what happens to you.'

For most of my life, I did deliberately lead a private life and inadvertently led a public life.

My parents and my grandmother inspire me every day and, every day, in my work and personal life.

I think about how best to live my grandmother's twin mantras that 'Life is not a dress rehearsal' and 'Life is not about what happens to you, but what you do with what happens to you.'

For most of my life, I deliberately led a private life in the public eye.

I hadn't planned on or expected to have a public dimension in my life.

Running is the one part of my life in which I fundamentally feel like the observer instead of the observed.

I've always been aware of both how extraordinarily normal and how extraordinarily extraordinary my life has been. It's always been important, first to my parents when I was younger, and now very much to me, to live in the world. I would never want to live in a cloister.

I think we need to care about the metrics of success in life, and I'm a pretty competitive person.

If I had one singular galvanizing ambition in life, I would try to reverse engineer toward it, but I don't.

That's who my mom is. She's a listener and a doer. She's a woman driven by compassion, by faith, by a fierce sense of justice and a heart full of love. So, this November, I'm voting for a woman who is my role model, as a mother, and as an advocate. A woman who has spent her entire life fighting for families and children.

My earliest memory is my mom picking me up after I had fallen down, giving me a big hug and reading me 'Goodnight Moon.' From that moment, to this one, every single memory I have of my mom is that regardless of what was happening in her life, she was always, always there for me.

As a kid, I was pretty obsessed with dinosaurs and the day that my parents took me to Dinosaur National Park, I didn't think life could get any better.

The love that comes from friendship is the underlying facet of a happy life.