The question is not how to survive, but how to thrive with passion, compassion, humor and style.

Nothing will work unless you do.

A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.

Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.

We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.

Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. Please remember that your difficulties do not define you. They simply strengthen your ability to overcome.

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style

If you are always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be.

You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I'll rise!

Emancipation was a proclamation, but not a fact.

She knew all the indices to the idle lonely, never bought a small tube of toothpaste, never dropped a magazine in her shopping card.

doubt is the privilege of those who have lived a long time,

Good science and good art are always about a condition of awe. I don't think there is any other function for the poet or the scientist in the human tribe but the astonishment of the soul.

For David Halberstam journalism was a calling, not a job. You couldn't fire him and he wouldn't quit.

I am one of the biggest Laura Nyro fans. I still listen to that stuff incessantly. Laura Nyro does not belong in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Songwriter Hall of Fame? Absolutely.

Has it struck you that the music which is regarded as the most sublime in western civilization, which is the music of Bach, is called baroque?

I sometimes think 'Gordon' must be the most bootlegged album in U.S history, since it sold only 200,000 copies in the country, yet 800,000 kids know the words to every song.

Yet, much of what lies beneath the ocean's surface remains a mystery, and our nation continues to rely on a confused, antiquated system of ocean governance.