Alice wonders if other women in the middle of the night have begun to resent their Formica.

Hope is a renewable option: If you run out of it at the end of the day, you get to start over in the morning.

If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life.

Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can't even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain.

Finally, cooking is good citizenship. It's the only way to get serious about putting locally raised foods into your diet, which keeps farmlands healthy and grocery money in the neighborhood.

We came from Bethlehem, Georgia bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle.

Maybe life doesn't get any better than this, or any worse, and what we get is just what we're willing to find: small wonders, where they grow.

Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.

It's what you do that makes your soul.

Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier.

Unless there is a Good Friday in your life, there can be no Easter Sunday.

Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.

Me being a black girl in London, whose mom is first-generation African and whose dad is West Indian, gives me a different view. I'm coming at soul from my own place.

The rooms I tend to be in are pretty democratic and the best idea wins.

It is not good to have an oar in everyone's boat.

It is the nature, and the advantage, of strong people that they can raise the crucial questions and form a clear opinion about them.

I think music talks to you on an emotional level, regardless of where you're from. I guess I related to the tempo of rap, the aggressiveness.

Be willing to absorb some risk and failures to allow people freedom to express themselves.

Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.

I'm lucky that people believe me when I'm in character.