If only all the contradictory voices shouting in my head would calm down and sing a song in unison, whatever it was I wouldn't care as long as they sang without dissonance.

It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.

Please, a definition: A hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.

Education is all a matter of building bridges.

Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.

Power doesn't have to show off. Power is confident, self-assuring, self-starting and self-stopping, self-warming and self-justifying. When you have it, you know it.

America is woven of many strands. I would recognise them and let it so remain. Our fate is to become one, and yet many. This is not prophecy, but description.

When I discover who I am, I'll be free.

I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time being ashamed.

What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?

God is love, I said, but art's the possibility of forms, and shadows are the source of identity.

I'm obviously not a rapper, and I don't have any claims to be one, really.

The music business has let me touch a lot of people with my talent.

If you're bored, your readers will be bored. If you're faking it, you won't get the kind of readers you want.

I'm a very social person and I love being out in the world, and the feeling of not having that is the scariest thing to me.

I'm excited about representing my gender, but at the same time it doesn't matter. I wouldn't say my gender has been a disadvantage.

Never think of any right effort as being fruitless. All right effort bears fruit, whether we see the results or not.

No one longs to live more than someone growing old.

Be wise among the wise, but pretend to be dull among fools.

I can't sit on grass without a blanket.

Living, being in the world, was a much greater and stranger thing than she had ever dreamed.