You never knew which split second might be the zigzag bolt dividing all that went before from the everything that comes next.

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.

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.

When people leave you, identify why they left and think about what is left

Measure your success by the number of people who envy you.

The most fulfilled among us are those who serve others.

That they can strengthen through the empowerment of others is essential wisdom often gathered by women.

It takes a minimum of six people, working in close harmony, to successfully flush a nautical toilet. That's why those old ships carried such large crews.

Get into the habit of saying, ''Speak, Lord,'' and life will become a romance.

The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.

A man will work and slave in obscurity for ten years and then become famous in ten minutes.

This is called synchronicity - a state in which you almost feel as if you are in a collaborative arrangement with fate.