“I think it's something that I had to teach myself because growing up wasn't always a barrel of laughs. I was insecure and I had a lot of self-doubts, which is why I tell myself I can do it and that I earned it. I think you kind of become your own best cheerleader. I mean, obviously, my mom and my grandmother were big cheerleaders of mine, but at the end of the day, you have to be your own cheerleader—every day. Otherwise, it's not going to work out if you don't believe in yourself. I think a lot of it, too, is looking around and saying 'Why not me?' You know, 'Why not me?'”

On life in hiding from Nazi authorities, p. 48
To Save a Life: Stories of Holocaust Rescue (2000)
Context: One of the things I learned, one of the strangest things, is how to think. There was nothing else to do. I couldn't see people, or go for a walk in the forest. All I had was my head and my books, and I thought a lot. I learned, because there was no interruption. I had access to myself, to my thinking. I wouldn't say that I particularly matured. The thinking was physics thinking. I was just short of twenty-two then.
I was in hiding for two years and two months, something like that. In all that time I went out very, very little, just once in a great while, after dark. Once I even took the train to Utrecht, forty miles from Amsterdam, with my yellow star, this star which I still have. Why did I go? I just wanted to visit some friends. I was a little bit crazy, a little bit insane.

Book V : Abysmal Voyage, Ch. 79
Wanderer (1963)
Context: I'll make no bones about it, I'm thinking of quitting analysis. When a man's bogged down, when the thing he is trying to do isn't working out, then he has to damn good and well change his way of living. If you would only hold out some hope to me, then it might be different.
I'll say this, too, that if it hadn't been for you I wouldn’t have turned into a stoolie for J. Edgar Hoover. I don't think you have the foggiest notion of the contempt I have had for myself since the day I did that thing.

Interview to Cosmopolitan (2016)

pg. 220
Pretty Mess book (2018)

These Days (ca. 1964-1965), from For Everyman (1973); previously recorded by Nico, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Tom Rush, Kenny Loggins, Iain Matthews, and Mates of State

Ellen DeGeneres' interview with The Four Agreements Author don Miguel Ruiz which appeared in the October 2001 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine

Interview with Ridley Pearson http://blog.booksamillion.com/author-spotlight/author-interviews/2016/08/interview-ridley-pearson/ (August 22, 2016)