There was no freedom in life, and certainly there was none in death.

She dares me to pour myself out like a living waterfall. She dares me to enter the soul that is more than my own; she extinguishes fear in mere seconds. She lets light come through.

A feminist is any woman who tells the truth about her life

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

A self that goes on changing is a self that goes on living.

I have a deeply hidden and inarticulate desire for something beyond the daily life.

I see you everywhere, in the stars, in the river, to me you're everything that exists; the reality of everything.

The only advice ... that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions.

No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.

Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.

Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.

The happiest people on Earth are the ones who know love.

A broken friendship that is mended through forgiveness can be even stronger than it once was.

I could easily have decided that life was cruel, that being black meant everything was stacked against me.

To worship God is to admit that we are entirely contrary to Him, and that He is willing to make us like Himself.

I recently had to wait two and a half hours in a doctor's office, just waiting to be seen. I literally was genuinely thinking 'Well, maybe this is a time loop.'

Every word I say has chains round its ankles; every thought I think is weighted with heavy weights.

I had no way to have a sense of humor about The Exorcist. I didn't know how. And this enabled me.

It is not always a matter of wild ovations and legendary performances. Sometimes you are just happy to get through an opera without trouble.

Our fears lie to us about how important they are.

You don't actually have to understand the song to be emotionally moved and uplifted, whereas with language it becomes quirky and analytical.