On this platform of peace, we can create a language to translate ourselves to ourselves and to each other.

I am a child of God. I always carry that with me.

Oh, Black known and unknown poets, how often have your auctioned pains sustained us? Who will compute the lonely nights made less lonely by your songs, or by the empty pots made less tragic by your tales? If we were a people much given to revealing secrets, we might raise monuments and sacrifice to the memories of our poets, but slavery cured us of that weakness.

What you're supposed to do when you don't like a thing is change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it. Don't complain.

Courage allows the successful woman to fail - and to learn powerful lessons from the failure - so that in the end, she didn't fail at all.

Love is that condition in the human spirit so profound that it empowers us to develop courage; to trust that courage and build bridges with it; to trust those bridges and cross over them so we can attempt to reach each other.

Of all the needs (there are none imaginary) a lonely child has, the one that must be satisfied, if there is going to be hope and a hope of wholeness, is the unshaking need for an unshakable God. My pretty Black brother was my Kingdom Come.

I know why the caged bird sings.

I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerance. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.

My life has been one great big joke, a dance that's walked a song that's spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke when I think about myself.

I know for sure that loves saves me and that it is here to save us all.

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.

We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay - and rise!

For Africa to me... is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.

The love of the family, the love of one person can heal. It heals the scars left by a larger society. A massive, powerful society.

The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: 'I'm with you kid. Let's go.'

We can learn to see each other and see ourselves in each other and recognize that human beings are more alike than we are unalike.

You are the sum total of everything you've ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot - it's all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive.

I work very hard, and I play very hard. I'm grateful for life. And I live it - I believe life loves the liver of it. I live it.

I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.