Maybe a person's world can grow bigger in all the right ways, not too wide that it becomes shallow, just large enough to preserve its depth.

The loneliness you feel with another person, the wrong person, is the loneliest of all.

I don't get why prom is like a mini-wedding these days...No one should spend that kind of money for a high school dance.

Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.

I was an awful critic. I operated on the assumption that there was an absolute scale of values against which art could be measured. I didn't trust my own subjective responses.

You really write the books you want to write. You can't take into consideration anything that anybody has said about you in the past, or what they'll say about you in the future.

The Harlem of my books was never meant to be real; I never called it real; I just wanted to take it away from the white man if only in my books.

Wouldst thou both eat thy cake and have it?

I respect the man who knows distinctly what he wants.

The party don't stop, til the casket drop.

Genuine love is volitional rather than emotional.

When you're younger, you think of your age in fractions. 4 1/2, 5 1/2. You don't hear 36 1/2. You become 2, you turn 40, you reach 50, you make it to 60. By now you're going so fast you hit 70!

At the heart of the gospel is a God who deliberately surrenders to the wild, irresistable power of love.