If we do not now dare everything, the fulfillment of that prophecy, re-created from the Bible in song by a slave, is upon us: God gave Noah the rainbow sign. No more water, fire next time.

Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.

I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do.

Fires can't be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks.

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.

The place in which I'll fit will not exist until I make it.

Trust life, and it will teach you, in joy and sorrow, all you need to know.

If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons.

You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.

The American idea of racial progress is measured by how fast I become white.

When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away even if it's only a glass of water.

It wasn't so hard being like your parents or 180 degrees the other way. What was hard was not being one way or the other.

There must be a day or two in a man's life when he is the precise age for something important.

People with the purest souls are capable of the greatest evils.

When the body breaks down and you start to wrinkle, I think it's so bad.

We're all Africans, everyone - black, white, yellow.

Defeatism about the past is a grievous error; defeatism about the future is a crime!

Pluto is not a planet, but I am.

I'm like, "Let me marry a feminist, let's do this thing." It's about time men should show up and say, "Yes, she should have access to whatever she needs."

Grow up? Get herself straightened out? Her mind reeled from the verbal battering. No matter what she did, her father would tell her she was wrong. Worthless. Undeserving.