I fell into shame like a suicide throws herself into a river. (253)

Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is that if we are not beautiful to each other, we cannot know beauty in any form.

Change, when it comes, cracks everything open.

Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies.

Fiction is a piece of truth that turns lies to meaning.

Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is the way you can both hate and love something you are not sure you understand.

I did not begin with craft, I began with strong feelings and worked toward craft.

Class, race, sexuality, gender and all other categories by which we categorize and dismiss each other need to be excavated from the inside.

One of the strengths I derive from my class background is that I am accustomed to contempt.

The only magic we have is what we make in ourselves, the muscles we build up on the inside, the sense of belief we create from nothing.

I have wanted everything as a writer and a woman, but most of all a world changed utterly by my revelations.

Sufis (the name for the realised individual, not the learner or follower) are reunited with objective Reality and Unity.

All names disappear. Children should be taught that in elementary school. But we're afraid to teach them.

You'll never know your strength if you avoid your challenges

A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.

You can tell your uncle stuff that you could not tell your dad. That is kind of the role of an uncle. I feel very much like a father sometimes but sometimes I feel like a teammate.

We have no money. We have no possessions. Maybe that is why we value the things we do have ... loyalty and friendship.

Present day statesmen are making the biggest blunder of the age if they believe that there can be any peace without equity and justice to all mankind.

Being an entrepreneur is an existential, not just a financial thing.

When different generations of cars are combined into one train, it messes with the loudspeaker system.

Chick Hearn taught me how to play basketball, how to think about basketball. He taught me how to love basketball.