I think beauty is an expression of love.

No matter where you're from, your dreams are valid.

What I've learned from myself is that I don't have to be anybody else. Myself is good enough.

You can't eat beauty, it doesn't sustain you. What is fundamentally beautiful is compassion, for yourself and those around you. That kind of beauty inflamed the heart and merchants the soul.

You fail, and then what? Life goes on. It's only when you risk failure that you discover things.

I realized that beauty was not a thing that I could acquire or consume, it was something that I just had to be.

What is fundamentally beautiful is compassion: for yourself and for those around you.

There is no shame in black beauty.

You have to allow for the impossible to be possible.

To be human is to seek perfection, and find joy in never attaining it.

I discovered that joy is not the negation of pain, but rather acknowledging the presence of pain and feeling happiness in spite of it.

Take the necessary steps needed to reach your goals

I like a good hater.

Slavery didnt break up the black families as much as liberal welfare rules.

Action cures fear. Indecision, postponement, on the other hand, fuel fear.

I'm not sure this is a world I belong in anymore. I'm not sure that I want to wake up.

As long as I can stay north or south, I'm gaining yards.

A lot of people in the religious world believe that by secularizing, or viewing the changes as secular, such as dropping the beard and changing my appearance, they consider this to be a fall.

I think that setting a novel in a small town taps into a sense of nostalgia among readers. People tend to believe life is different in small towns, and frankly, it is different.

There's an appreciation, not unlike that for dancers or tightrope walkers, of the body undergoing tests and coming through them by courage and technique; a desire for "clean" results.

I would lose straight away if I went on 'American Idol.