"So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realized...and so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life."
"It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default."
"One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality. That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people's lives simply by existing."
"We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better."
I was all prepared to blog about what I did this weekend, and I will later, but when I read her speech it absolutely astonished me. Her writing is clear, concise and valid. I don't know that anyone could say what she said any better. I guess I'm just going to absorb it, and let you absorb it for now.
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