I'm a member and preacher to that church where the blind don't see and the lame don't walk and what's dead stays that way.

You will have found Christ when you are concerned with other people’s sufferings and not your own.

You shall know the truth, and it will make you odd.

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.

Right now the whole world seems to be going through a dark night of the soul.

Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.

...you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it.

What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.

[To] know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility . . .

It is the business of the artist to uncover the strangeness of truth

I don't deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it.

I’ve never had anyone’s approval, so I’ve learned to live without it.

When I was young, I thought I was a bird at one time. Then they told me I can't fly, so I stopped flying.

No Bible, Quran or Veda can give you religion.

These woods are as empty as you think, he had said. You cannot know what the light might summon from the darkness.

When the world seems to be spinning out of control I choose:faith over fear

God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture.

Moment by moment, with a twitch, a shudder, a look, it’s Mr. Hardy who movingly draws you in, turning a stranger’s face into a life.

Americans are much more open than people in Britain.

It doesn't do good to open doors for someone who doesn't have the price to get in. If he has the price, he may not need the laws. There is no law saying the Negro has to live in Harlem or Watts.

I did want to mark the fact that it was the first African-American to win the Lead Actress category.I thought it was so progressive.