• "Never feel self-pity, the most destructive emotion there is. How awful to be caught up in the terrible squirrel cage of self." - Millicent Fenwick
• *“Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can't build on it; it's only good for wallowing in.” - Katherine Mansfield
• "Do what you say you're going to do." —Quora user Blake Alexander (http://www.businessinsider.com/best-advice-people-have-gotten-2014-1)
• "The safest way to try to get what you want is to try to deserve what you want." —Quora user Josh Tarasoff (http://www.businessinsider.com/best-advice-people-have-gotten-2014-1)
• Slow down.

"When I was in my 20s I worked as a waiter at a very popular restaurant. I found it very difficult to keep up with the orders and, consequently, my tips were very low.

One of the very experienced servers took me aside and she said, 'Slow down and take longer steps. You'll feel more relaxed and your customers will see that and trust you.'

If you slow down, you have time to think and plan better. Taking longer steps means more than just how you move through a space. It's about looking ahead and covering more ground, encompassing more than just the task at hand." —Quora user Gordon Bennet (http://www.businessinsider.com/best-advice-people-have-gotten-2014-1)

• Everyone ends up in the same place.

"'At the end of the game, the king and the pawn go back in the same box.' —Italian Proverb

When you really think about this, in the end we all end up the same. You can't take your money and fame with you after you die." —Quora user Felix Wong (http://www.businessinsider.com/best-advice-people-have-gotten-2014-1)

• Don't worry what other people think.

"Stop being so self-conscious because absolutely nobody is paying any attention to you anyway — they are only paying attention to themselves." —Quora user Michael Wolfe (http://www.businessinsider.com/best-advice-people-have-gotten-2014-1)

• You can't truly control anything but how well you do things.

"To find happiness in life's tasks, invest in the process (which you can control), not in the outcome (which is largely out of your control)." —Quora user Mark Hurley (http://www.businessinsider.com/best-advice-people-have-gotten-2014-1)

• Listen.

"God gave you two ears and one mouth; use them proportionally." —Quora user Derrick Mayfield (http://www.businessinsider.com/best-advice-people-have-gotten-2014-1)

• Take risks when you can.

"On deciding whether to step off my career track in my mid-20s to live abroad for a year: 'You have the rest of your life to work. You'll be working for 40 years. I don't know why we were in such a hurry when we were young.' I took the year off." —Quora user Deborah Diamond (http://www.businessinsider.com/best-advice-people-have-gotten-2014-1)

• James Baldwin, one of the authors who most spoke to my spirit, once put it this way:

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me the most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”