Everyday life is a disaster, and disaster can liberate us.

There is no one as dangerous as he or she who has nothing to lose.

Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go.

A book is a heart that only beats in the chest of another.

To be hopeful means to be uncertain about the future, to be tender toward possibilities, to be dedicated to change all the way down to the bottom of your heart.

Worry is a way to pretend that you have knowledge or control over what you don't--and it surprises me, even in myself, how much we prefer ugly scenarios to the pure unknown.

Joy doesn't betray but sustains activism. And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated and isolated, joy is a fine initial act of insurrection.

Politics is pervasive. Everything is political and the choice to be "apolitical" is usually just an endorsement of the status quo and the unexamined life.

Memory, even in the rest of us, is a shifting, fading, partial thing, a net that doesn't catch all the fish by any means and sometimes catches butterflies that don't exist.

Every minute of every hour of every day you are making the world, just as you are making yourself, and you might as well do it with generosity and kindness and style.

Revolution is as unpredictable as an earthquake and as beautiful as spring. Its coming is always a surprise, but its nature should not be.

An ocean of shimmering love exists in your heart. Tap into it today and rest in the undulating currents of the great mystery.

In too many instances we have settled for a world of our own shaping that is shaping up to be in terrible shape.

We are never happy; we can only remember that we were so once.

I think there are influences that you open the door to, and influences that come under the door.

There is only one door, one bridge, one ladder, between earth and heaven - the crucified Son of God.

the pain of that first lost was still raw. You could deal with it, endure it, but never escape it.

Your first obligation as a writer is to tell the truth and to tell a good story.

It's easy. [Black man] is - he's separate already. The fact that you have Harlem, the fact that you have the Negro ghetto and the so-called Negro slum, he's already separate.

Acting is a specific discipline. Just because you can sing doesn't mean you have the sensitivities of being an actor.

We all dream about love, want to be in love, and have been hurt by love.