Why is it that only girls stand on the sides of their feet? As if they're afraid to plant themselves?

Hope is a renewable option: If you run out of it at the end of the day, you get to start over in the morning.

If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life.

Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can't even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain.

Finally, cooking is good citizenship. It's the only way to get serious about putting locally raised foods into your diet, which keeps farmlands healthy and grocery money in the neighborhood.

We came from Bethlehem, Georgia bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle.

Maybe life doesn't get any better than this, or any worse, and what we get is just what we're willing to find: small wonders, where they grow.

Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.

It's what you do that makes your soul.

Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier.

The trick to taking the paper off the crayons...is to just do it. There is no trick.

The musical performances do more than enrich the movie; they complete it.

Faith is a re-directing of our sight, a getting out of the focus of our own vision and getting God into focus.

Almost half of all Latinas currently on Social Security rely exclusively on their benefit check in retirement.

Everything flows and nothing abides. Everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.

We are all so sunk in sin, and so wedded to the world, that we would never turn to God and seek salvation, unless He first called us by His grace. Without a divine call, no one can be saved.

When I came in, Haiti was not governed by Haitians anymore. Probably mostly by NGOs. And that has done what to Haiti? It has weakened our institution.

I couldn't see who swam in the darkness, who wore shadows like a second skin.

Sometimes, it is necessary to step beyond what you have known and to reach for something more.

Re-examine all that you have been told... dismiss that which insults your soul.