You don't think you'll live past it and you don't really. The person you were is gone. But the half of you that's still alive wakes up one day and takes over again.

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.

But time given to wishing for what can't be is not only spent, but wasted, and for all that we waste we shall be accountable.

I think to say that meditation is helpful to artists is true and it's great, but it's also essentially helpful to any kind of process of, just, life.

Is there not an art, a music, and a stream of words that shalt be life, the acknowledged voice of life?

I think the question that nobody wanted to deal with is the question they're posing: did my kid die in vain? Because the answer is too awful.

The important things to me are your faith, your family and your friends. If you have that, you have everything.

I grew up with classical music blasting in my parents' living room and my older brother's practicing saxophone in his room listening to jazz... a beautiful chaos.

The more perfect the approximation to truth, the more perfect is art.

If you are worried or afraid of anything, there is something in your mental attitude that needs correction.

I got on the TV show at 40 and that is something very rare. So, I know that God gave me that role (on) One Life to Live - the role of Carlotta, the role of a mom.

The consequences of today are determined by the actions of the past. To change your future, alter your decisions today.