We who are old know that age is more than a disability. It is an intense and varied experience, almost beyond our capacity at times, but something to be carried high.

My kitchen linoleum is so black and shiny that I waltz while I wait for the kettle to boil. This pleasure is for the old who live alone.

Life does not acommodate you, it shatters you. It is meant to, and it couldn't do it better. Every seed destroys its container or else there would be no fruition.

No matter how old a mother is, she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement.

Making those we love happy sounds innocent as a dove, but it can be as destructive as a lion.

Age puzzles me. I thought it was a quiet time. My seventies were interesting and fairly serene, but my eighties are passionate. I grow more intense as I age.

life is a tragic mystery. We are pierced and driven by laws we only half understand, we find that the lesson we learn again and again is that of accepting heroic helplessness.

Difficulties are what makes it honorable and interesting to be alive.

I wonder if living alone makes one more alive. No precious energy goes in disagreement or compromise. No need to augment others, there is just yourself, just truth - a morsel - and you.

Is life a pregnancy? That would make death a birth.

Anger must be the energy that has not yet found its fight channel.

Hope was always out ahead of fact, possibility obscured the outlines of reality.

She rounded on me with such ferocity that for a moment I didn’t recognize her. A flash of fangs, a dark gleam in her blacker-than-night eyes. It was the most vampiric I’d ever seen her.

I'm cool with people dressing up as Eleven for Halloween. I definitely want to open my door and give them candy.

I was able to do To Sleep with Anger, a very powerful film about African Americans, their spirituality, and the things that happened within a small community and a family.

If we are to transform the world, we must first begin by transforming ourselves.

Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation.

As for fame, it can go to your head and you can become full of yourself.

The sight of the bare katana inspires everyone to a practically Nipponese level of politeness

You put a big bird in a small cage, it'll sing you a song

Never give up on your dream...Perseverance is all important. If you don't have the desire and the belief in yourself to keep trying after you've been told you should quit, you'll never make it.