What humility does for one is it reminds us that there are people before me. I have already been paid for. And what I need to do is prepare myself so that I can pay for someone else who has yet to come but who may be here and needs me.

I will not sit in a room with black people when the N word is used. I know it was meant to belittle a person, so I will not sit there and have that poison put on me. Now a black person can say, 'Oh, you know, I can use this word because I'm black.'

At one time, you could sit on the Rue de la Paix in Paris or at the Habima Theater in Tel Aviv or in Medina and you could see a person come in, black, white, it didn't matter. You said, 'That's an American' because there's a readiness to smile and to talk to people.

When you learn, teach, when you get, give.

You will face many defeats in your life, but never let yourself be defeated.

Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I've got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs?

While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God's creation.

I've learned that making a 'living' is not the same thing as 'making a life'.

Life loves the person who dares to live it.

Life loves the person who dares to live it.

When you know better you do better.

Women should be tough, tender, laugh as much as possible, and live long lives.

Surviving is important. Thriving is elegant.

All knowledge is spendable currency, depending on the market.

You can only become great at something you are willing to sacrifice for

I had read a Tale of Two Cities and found it up to my standards as a romantic novel. She opened the first page and I heard poetry for the first time in my life...her voice slid in and curved down trough and over the words. She was nearly singing.

Until recently each generation found it more expedient to plead guilty to the charge of being young and ignorant, easier to take the punishment meted out by the older generation (which had itself confessed to the same crime short years before). The command to grow up at once was more bearable than the faceless horror of wavering purpose, which was youth.

The dread of futility has been my life-long plague.

Faith is the evidence of the unseen.

Love costs all we are and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free. A Brave and Startling Truth.

The intensity with which young people live demands that they "blank out" as often as possible.

love life, engage in it, give it all you've got. love it with a passion, because life truly does give back, many times over, what you put into it

I know that one of the great arts that the writer develops is the art of saying, 'No. No, I'm finished. Bye.' And leaving it alone. I will not write it into the ground. I will not write the life out of it. I won't do that.

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.