I don’t trust people who don’t love themselves and tell me, ‘I love you.’ … There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.
Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.
Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.
First best is falling in love. Second best is being in love. Least best is falling out of love. But any of it is better than never having been in love.
In all the world, there is no heart for me like yours.In all the world, there is no love for you like mine.
Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.
I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life’s a bitch. You’ve got to go out and kick ass.
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.
There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.
This is a wonderful day, I have never seen this one before.
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
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.
I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.(Popular misquote of “You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.”)
The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise.
Stepping onto a brand-new path is difficult, but not more difficult than remaining in a situation, which is not nurturing to the whole woman.
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.
A Woman in harmony with her spirit is like a river flowing.She goes where she will without pretense and arrives at her destination prepared to be herself and only herself
I want to thank you, Lord, for life and all that’s in it. Thank you for the day and for the hour, and the minute.
Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for.
The caged bird sings with a fearful trill,of things unknown, but longed for still, and his tune is heard on the distant hill, for the caged bird sings of freedom.
Living well is an art that can be developed: a love of life and ability to take great pleasure from small offerings and assurance that the world owes you nothing and that every gift is exactly that, a gift.
Life is going to give you just what you put in it. Put your whole heart in everything you do, and pray, then you can wait.
Make every effort to change things you do not like. If you cannot make a change, change the way you have been thinking. You might find a new solution.
It is this belief in a power larger than myself and other than myself which allows me to venture into the unknown and even the unknowable.
That’s what you want to do? Then nothing beats a trial but a failure. Give it everything you’ve got. I’ve told you many times, ‘Cant do is like Dont Care.’ Neither of them have a home.
I am overwhelmed by the grace and persistence of my people.
I want all my senses engaged. Let me absorb the world’s variety and uniqueness.
There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure truth.
I had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss
Your crown has been bought and paid for. Put it on your head and wear it.
No matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.
I find relief from the questions only when I concede that I am not obliged to know everything. I remind myself it is sufficient to know what I know, and that what I know, may not always be true.
I answer the heroic question, ‘Death, where is thy sting?’ with ‘It is in my heart and mind and memories.
It’s the fire in my eyes, And the flash of my teeth, The swing in my waist, And the joy in my feet. I’m a woman Phenomenally.
Poetry puts starch in your backbone so you can stand, so you can compose your life.
I couldn’t tell fact from fiction,Or if the dream was trueMy only sure predictionIn this world was you.I’d touch your features inchly. Beard love and dared the cost, The sented spiel reeled me unreal And I found my senses lost.
Making a decision to write was a lot like deciding to jump into a frozen lake.
I speak to the Black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition–about what we can endure, dream, fail at and survive.
We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.
Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.
When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.
Whining is not only graceless, but can be dangerous. It can alert a brute that a victim is in the neighborhood.
I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.
My mother’s gifts of courage to me were both large and small. The latter are woven so subtly into the fabric of my psyche that I can hardly distinguish where she stops and I begin.
There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.
Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannot influence—neither speed up nor slow down, add to nor diminish—it is an imponderably valuable gift.
I found it hard to think of leaving my books. They had been my elevators out of the midden, and to whom could I entrust such close friends?
I dreamt we walked together along the shore. We made satisfying small talk and laughed. This morning I found sand in my shoe and a seashell in my pocket. Was I only dreaming?
Every person under the sound of my voice is a soldier. You are either fighting for your freedom or betraying the fight for freedom or enlisted in the army to deny somebody else freedom.
To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colors of a rainbow.
It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.
When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young.
You are very kind and very intelligent and those elements are not always found together. Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, and my mother – yes, you belong in that category. Here, give me a kiss.
While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of mans humanity to a man.
On this platform of peace, we can create a languageto translate ourselves to ourselves and to each other.
Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.
Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances.
All my ways of being are musical and mysterious.Yet I embrace you openly.Ripe with expectancy.
I believe that the most important single thing, beyond discipline and creativity is daring to dare.
My life has been long, and believing that life loves the liver of it, I have dared to try many things, sometimes trembling, but daring, still.
Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.
There is nothing quite so tragic as a young cynic, because it means the person has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.
Continue to be bold, courageous. Try to chose the wisest thing and once you’ve chosen the wisest thing go out and try to achieve it. Be it.
If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform a million realities.
To be allowed, no, invited into the private lives of strangers, and to share their joys and fears, was a chance to exchange the Southern bitter wormwood for a cup of mead with Beowulf or a hot cup of tea and milk with Oliver Twist.
I am a WomanPhenomenally.Phenomenal Woman,that’s me.
She said, ‘No, you learned that you have power – power and determination. I love you and I am proud of you. With those two things, you can go anywhere and everywhere.
Go,” she whispered. “Go. Show them you spell your name W-O-M-A-N.
Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.
I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.
You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.
You can’t use up creativity. The more you use the more you have.
You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.
When things were very bad his soul just crawled behind his heart and curled up and went to sleep
Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning.
The“b” word and the “n” word are like poison, whether you take poison from a vial or pour it into Bavarian crystal, it is still poison.
The customs are as formalised as an eighteenth-century minuet, and a child at the race’s knee learns the moves and twirls by osmosis and observation.
I don’t believe an accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers. It makes them siblings, gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition people have to work at.
My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more intelligent and more educated than college professors.
Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.
This bed yawnsbeneath the weightof our absent selves.
I’m young as morningand fresh as dew.Everybody loves meand so do you.
You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.
I am never proud to participate in violence, yet I know that each of us must care enough for ourselves that we can be ready and able to come to our own defense when and wherever needed.
As soon as healing takes place, go out and heal somebody else.
Take a day to heal from the lies you’ve told yourself and the ones that have been told to you.
You saw me bludgeoned by circumstance.Lost, injured, hurt by chance.I screamed to the heavens….loudly screamed….Trying to change our nightmares into dreams…
Lovers think quite different thoughtswhile lying side by side.
You may shoot me with your words,You may cut me with your eyes,You may kill me with your hatefulness,But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Language is man’s way of communicating with his fellow man and it is language alone which separates him from the lower animals.
In an unfamiliar culture, it is wise to offer no innovations, no suggestions, or lessons. The epitome of sophistication is utter simplicity.
Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.
You can only become great at that thing you’re willing to sacrifice for.
Ignorance is a terrible thing. It causes families to lose their center and causes people to lose their control. Ignorance knows no binds. Old people, young people, middle-aged, black, white, can all be ignorant.
The devil lives in our mistakes, the lord lives in our rights. Who lives in our ignorance, and who wins after all?
I learned to love my son without wanting to possess him and I learned how to teach him to teach himself.
Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good.
This a a wonderful day. I’ve never seen this one before.
Take the blinders from your visiontake the padding from your earsand confess you’ve heard me crying and admit you’ve seen my tears.
The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.
I believe that one can never leave home. I believe that one carries the shadows, the dreams, the fears and the dragons of home under one’s skin, at the extreme corners of one’s eyes and possibly in the gristle of the earlobe.
…one can never leave home…one carries the shadows, the dreams, the dragons of home under one’s skin, at the extreme corners of one’s eyes…
Be present in all things and thankful for all things.
To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision.
If you must look back, do so forgivingly. If you must look forward, do so prayerfully. However, the wisest thing you can do is be present in the present… gratefully.
And my seven-year-old world humpty-dumptied, never to be put back together again.
If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don’t be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning ‘Good morning’ at total strangers.
When I walk in, they may like me or dislike me, but everybody knows I’m here
Most people don’t grow up. Most people age. They find parking spaces, honor their credit cards, get married, have children, and call that maturity. What that is, is aging.
Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.
We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.
Sugar cane reach up to GodAnd every baby cryingShame the blanket of my nightAnd all my days are dying
Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.
When you wish someone joy, you wish them peace, love, prosperity, happiness… all the good things.
We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.
It may be enough, however, to have it said that we survive in exact relationship to the dedication of our poets (include preachers, musicians, and blues singers).
If more Africans had eaten missionaries, the continent would be in better shape.
If it is true that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, isn’t it also true a society is only as healthy as its sickest citizen and only as wealthy as its most deprived?
If funkytown was a trailerpark, this guy would be a double-wide.
I’ve learned that making a ‘living’ is not the same thing as ‘making a life’.
There have been people in my life who meant me well, taught me valuable lessons, and others who have meant me ill and have given me ample notification that my world is not meant to be all peaches and cream.
They may have forgotten how badly they treated you, or they may pretend that they have forgotten. But watch: They will come back to you.
Trust your brain to suggest a solution, then have the courage to follow through.
You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.
I’ve learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you’ll miss them when they’re gone from your life.
I will look after you and I will look after anybody you say needs to be looked after, any way you say. I am here. I brought my whole self to you. I am your mother.
Courage is the most important of all virtues because without it we can’t practice any other virtue with consistency.
The most called-upon prerequisite of a friend is an accessible ear.
At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice.
If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.
My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.
I love the song ‘I Hope You Dance’ by Lee Ann Womack. I was going to write that song, but someone beat me to it.
If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.
Once you appreciate one of your blessings, one of your senses, your sense of hearing, then you begin to respect the sense of seeing and touching and tasting, you learn to respect all the senses.
I respect myself and insist upon it from everybody. And because I do it, I then respect everybody, too.
My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.
Those of us who submitted or surrendered our ideas and dreams and identities to the ‘leaders’ must take back our rights, our identities, our responsibilities.
I never expected anyone to take care of me, but in my wildest dreams and juvenile yearnings, I wanted the house with the picket fence from June Allyson movies. I knew that was yearning like one yearns to fly.
When younger writers and poets, musicians and painters are weakened by a stemming of funds, they come to me saddened, not as full of dreams and excitement and ideas. I am then weakened and diminished, and made less rich.
If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.
In the flush of love’s light, we dare be brave. And suddenly we see that love costs all we are, and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.
Writing and cookery are just two different means of communication.
When I cook for my family on Christmas, I make feijoada, a South American dish of roasted and smoked meats like ham, pork, beef, lamb, and bacon – all served with black beans and rice. It’s festive but different.
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’m not a writer who teaches. I’m a teacher who writes.
Loving someone liberates the lover as well as the beloved. And that kind of love comes with age.
It’s still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air. When I write, I get all the weeping out.
Independence is a heady draught, and if you drink it in your youth, it can have the same effect on the brain as young wine does. It does not matter that its taste is not always appealing. It is addictive and with each drink you want more.
I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
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.
I’m just someone who likes cooking and for whom sharing food is a form of expression.
Eating is so intimate. It’s very sensual. When you invite someone to sit at your table and you want to cook for them, you’re inviting a person into your life.
The best comfort food will always be greens, cornbread, and fried chicken.
When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.
I learned a long time ago the wisest thing I can do is be on my own side, be an advocate for myself and others like me.
We are braver and wiser because they existed, those strong women and strong men… We are who we are because they were who they were. It’s wise to know where you come from, who called your name.
It’s good to remember that in crises, natural crises, human beings forget for awhile their ignorances, their biases, their prejudices. For a little while, neighbors help neighbors and strangers help strangers.
You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lines. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I’ll rise.
History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.
Won’t it be wonderful when black history and native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history.
The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are.
Elimination of illiteracy is as serious an issue to our history as the abolition of slavery.
I know that when I pray, something wonderful happens. Not just to the person or persons for whom I’m praying, but also something wonderful happens to me. I’m grateful that I’m heard.
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 had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss.
It is impossible to struggle for civil rights, equal rights for blacks, without including whites. Because equal rights, fair play, justice, are all like the air: we all have it, or none of us has it. That is the truth of it.
There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.
The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.
One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.
I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.
You have to develop ways so that you can take up for yourself, and then you take up for someone else. And so sooner or later, you have enough courage to really stand up for the human race and say, ‘I’m a representative.’
You can’t forgive without loving. And I don’t mean sentimentality. I don’t mean mush. I mean having enough courage to stand up and say, ‘I forgive. I’m finished with it.’
The only thing is, people have to develop courage. It is most important of all the virtues. Because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtues consistently.
Courage – you develop courage by doing small things like just as if you wouldn’t want to pick up a 100-pound weight without preparing yourself.
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!
Whatever you want to do, if you want to be great at it, you have to love it and be able to make sacrifices for it.
All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us that we are all more alike than we are unalike.
I’m interested in women’s health because I’m a woman. I’d be a darn fool not to be on my own side.
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.
The sadness of the women’s movement is that they don’t allow the necessity of love. See, I don’t personally trust any revolution where love is not allowed.
It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody.
While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of man’s humanity to man.
Whenever something went wrong when I was young – if I had a pimple or if my hair broke – my mom would say, ‘Sister mine, I’m going to make you some soup.’ And I really thought the soup would make my pimple go away or my hair stronger.
My mom was a terrible parent of young children. And thank God – I thank God every time I think of it – I was sent to my paternal grandmother. Ah, but my mother was a great parent of a young adult.
My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.
In so many ways, segregation shaped me, and education liberated me.
I love wisdom. And you can never be great at anything unless you love it. Not be in love with it, but love the thing, admire the thing. And it seems that if you love the thing, and you don’t just want to possess it, it will find you.
Our stories come from our lives and from the playwright’s pen, the mind of the actor, the roles we create, the artistry of life itself and the quest for peace.
The loss of young first love is so painful that it borders on the ludicrous.
If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.
Nothing succeeds like success. Get a little success, and then just get a little more.
The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you – black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight.
Human beings love poetry. They don’t even know it sometimes… whether they’re the songs of Bono, or the songs of Justin Bieber… they’re listening to poetry.
I wrote some of the worst poetry west from the Mississippi River, but I wrote. And I finally sometimes got it right.
I’m happy to be a writer – of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn’t a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.
The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.
The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.
I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.
I’ve read everything Thomas Wolfe ever wrote; my brother and I memorized whole chapters of ‘You Can’t Go Home Again’ and ‘Look Homeward, Angel.’
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.
Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.