“I can honestly say that every gift I’ve ever given has brought at least as much happiness to me as it has to the person I’ve given it to. I give as I feel. Throughout the year, that may mean mailing a handwritten note to someone who didn’t expect it. Or sending a great new lotion I just discovered, or delivering a book of poetry with a pretty bow. It doesn’t matter what the thing is; what matters is how much of yourself goes into the giving, so that when the gift is gone, the spirit of you lingers

“You might be locked in a world not of your own making, her eyes said, but you still have a claim on how it is shaped. You still have responsibilities.”

“Regardless of your lot in life, build something beautiful on it.”

“To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.”

“Through Him, therefore, let us constantly and at all times offer up to God a sacrifice of praise, which is the fruit of lips that thankfully acknowledge and confess and glorify His name. Hebrews 13:15”

“No area of human life is so full of difficulties and heartaches as relationships. If you listed everything that upset you during the past week, I suspect most had to do with other people. People can be selfless and kind, but they can also be difficult, stubborn, ego-driven, thoughtless, mean, selfish, manipulative. But the problem is not just other people; it’s also ourselves.”

“Writing is the great invention of the world.”

“They, they, they. That was the problem with people like Joyce. They talked about the richness of their multicultural heritage and it sounded real good, until you noticed that they avoided black people. It wasn't a matter of conscious choice, necessarily, just a matter of gravitational pull, the way integration always worked, a one-way street. The minority assimilated into the dominant culture, not the other way around. Only white culture could be neutral and objective. Only white culture could be nonracial, willing to adopt the occasional exotic into its ranks. Only white culture had individuals. And we, the half-breeds and the college-degreed, take a survey of the situation and think to ourselves, Why should we get lumped in with the losers if we don't want to? We become only so grateful to lose ourselves in the crowd, America's happy, faceless marketplace; and we're never so outraged as when a cabbie drives past us or the woman in the elevator clutches her purse, not so much because we're bothered by the fact that such indignities are what less fortunate coloreds have to put up with every single day of their lives-- although that's what we tell ourselves-- but because we're wearing a Brooks Brothers suit and speak impeccable English and yet have somehow been mistaken for an ordinary nigger. Don't know who I am? I'm an individual!”

“With men [it is] impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God. MARK 10:27”

“Why do you need to be like anyone? You're good as you are,”

“We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch - we are going back from whence we came.”

“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”

“Failure isn't failure if you do better the next time.”

“One should not pursue goals that are easily achieved. One must develop an instinct for what one can just barely achieve through one’s greatest efforts.”

“Be absolute for death; for either death or life shall be the sweeter.”