We have pain and hate and love and joy and war in the world because we want them.

This would be...a book that would be a trapdoor down into some place dark. A place only you could go, alone, when you opened the cover. Because only books have that power.

Our purest form of joy comes when people we envy get hurt. That most genuine form of joy.

Some stories, you use up. Others use you up.

Yes, terrible things happen, but sometimes those terrible things- they save you.

As human beings, our first commandment is:Something needs to happen

You have to recognize your inability to love before you can love the way God loves. His version of love is unfamiliar to the natural world

I lost my way in the darkness. But at dawn of a bright light, I find my path.

Forget "six degrees of separation" today it's "six degrees of CONNECTION.

He had never looked at me before, never, and the idea made my skin burn.

Politics is a word spelled N-O-W.

Old Camels carry young Camels skins to the Market.

He loves not who does not see the faults of the beloved as virtues.

This is jazz, this is funk, this is soul, this is gospel This is sanctified sick, this is player Pentecostal. This is church front pew, Amen, pulpit, What my people need and the opposite of bullshit.

The pleasant life: a life that successfully pursues the positive emotions about the present, past, and future.

All the average human being asks is something he can call a home; a family that is fed and warm; and now and then a little happiness; once in a long while an extravagance.