I know people. Most have no earthly notion of the price of a snow-white conscience.

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.

Regardless of how far we have come, we are still looking for answers. While many are being answered, what we really want to know is how we can make our lives better.

A great devotee of the gospel of getting on.

Lately I did a film called All I Want for Christmas and it was well received. This gave me a new point of view and a new respect for my work as an actress.

I love the gallery, the arena of representation. It's a commercial world, and morality is based generally around economics, and that's taking place in the art gallery.

I think the United States is way behind the times.

I think my parents gave me a love of learning; from there you set out on your own path.

The moment you say, "We are proud. I'm proud to be this, and I'm proud to be that," what you're saying is we're almost as good as the others. "Almost" always means not quite.

Surely, in the work of the Lord, it is what we do after we think we have done enough that really counts with him, for that's when the blessings flow.

I have survived by representing these sufferings of mine in the form of the novel.

When I get intimate with my paintings, it's a real good spiritual thing to get off my chest. Same as playing the instruments is a great release.