We need to change what we say and what we allow to be said in front of us.

Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we're supposed to be and embracing who we are.

Don't try to win over the haters; you are not a jackass whisperer.

Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.

Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren't always comfortable, but they're never weakness.

Daring greatly means the courage to be vulnerable. It means to show up and be seen. To ask for what you need. To talk about how you're feeling. To have the hard conversations.

What makes you vulnerable makes you beautiful.

Believing that you're enough is what gives you the courage to be authentic.

Shame hates it when we reach out and tell our story. It hates having words wrapped around it - it can't survive being shared. Shame loves secrecy... When we bury our story, the shame metastasizes.

When we deny our stories, They define us. When we own our stories, we get to write the ending.

Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it.

I would have offered you a forest of truth, but you wish to speak of a single leaf

The difference between where you are and where God wants you to be is equal to the pain you're willing to endure.

The question then will be, whether a consolidated government can preserve the freedom and secure the rights of the people.

Irene Bennett Brown keeps the promise of her gifted writing and love for history inside this fine contemporary mystery. I loved it.

I'm an American and I want instant gratification.

I don't consider myself a divining rod whom God is speaking through or any kind of crap like that.

The right to do something doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.

At some stages of your life you will deal with things and at others you are overwhelmed with misery and anxiety.

It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that if you stop or curtail stop-and-frisk, or if cops are reluctant to do it, violent crimes are going to go up.

I'm truly an outsider in the poetry world. When I started writing, I was trying to move my poems away from modernist lines.