The blues is an art of ambiguity, an assertion of the irrepressibly human over all circumstances, whether created by others or by one's own human failing.

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.

Grief is like a journey one must take on a winding mountainside, often seeing the same scenery many times, a road which eventually leads to somewhere we've never been before.

We cannot be too careful about the words we use

My own rule is to let everything alone.

New York is a granite beehive, where people jostle and whir like molecules in an overheated jar. Houston is six suburbs in search of a center.

Too often I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen.

The only bookstore I had was the paperback rack at the drugstore.

Prudence in action avails more than wisdom in conception.

It is necessary to salvation that all Christians be subject to the pope.

The good Husbandman may pluck His rose & gather in His lily.

Shalvis makes me laugh, makes me cry, makes me sigh with pure pleasure.