I was taught growing up not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers, to withdraw myself from the sinful 'others'. But we are all others. We are all sinners in someone's eyes.

I think this is what we all want to hear: that we are not alone in hitting the bottom, and that it is possible to come out of that place courageous, beautiful, and strong.

This is the only advice I offer you. Pick the small thing, and carry it on. Let it change your life.

It is the capacity to feel consuming grief and pain and despair that also allows me to embrace love and joy and beauty with my whole heart. I must let it all in.

I know what it's like to sleep in fear, to starve myself to be worthy, to be ashamed of my voice, to want to sleep forever. To question why I deserve to live.

I name you today, heart fears. I am small, but you are smaller. You will not stop me. You have a voice, fears, and I must listen, but then I will open my heart. I will love you right to death.

I've had a lot of therapists, so I've had the opportunity to approach my fear in many different ways. I've faced it head on and sideways and tried to tiptoe up behind it.

The most amazing thing is that all my sorrows, all of my darkest moments, are becoming my gifts.

The shadow is dark and the woods are cold, but they are not endless. No matter how lost you are now, you are not lost forever. You are findable.Love just keeps on looking. Love is forever tries.

Everything we have, everything we are, is a gift. How can we judge and shame ourselves if this is true?

Love lights our darkness. It is forever tries.

The instability and disorderliness we have in Nigeria today and Africa at large is totally due to the absence of this light.

How can there be too many children? That is like saying there are too many flowers." ~ Mother Teresa of Calcutta

Grief is not as heavy as guilt, but it takes more away from you.

The idea of "race" represents one of the most dangerous myths of our time.

When you win, there's glory enough for everybody. When you lose, there's glory for none.

We know that permanent sobriety can be attained only by a most revolutionary change in the life and outlook of the individual.

Tenderness is total love, whereas justice is only a part of love, though it believes itself, mistakenly, to be the whole.

Just before my final year of high school, my brother, sister and I moved with my mother to San Francisco.

Learn to relax. Your body is precious, as it houses your mind and spirit. Inner peace begins with a relaxed body.

The public hungers to see talented young people kill themselves.