“Daughter of Eve from the far land of Spare Oom where eternal summer reigns around the bright city of War Drobe, how would it be if you came and had tea with me?”

“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!”

“Don't tell me that I can't do it. Go and tell God that story. After all, He is the one who gave me the air to breath and be able to do it well! Go!”

“It is not that I do not get angry. I don't give vent to my anger. I cultivate the quality of patience as angerlessness, and generally speaking, I succeed. But I only control my anger when it comes. How I find it possible to control it would be a useless question, for it is a habit that everyone must cultivate and must succeed in forming by constant practice.”

“The wheels of [God’s] mercy and justice move quietly and silently, but they do move.”

“To dwell on the things that depress or anger us does not help in overcoming them. One must knock them down alone.”

“If our minds and hearts are not filled with God’s truth, something else will take His place: cynicism, occultism, false religions and philosophies, drugs—the list is endless.”

“If our faith isn’t rooted in the Bible, it will wither like a plant pulled out of the soil.”

“It is easier to move from failure to success in from excuses to success.”

“I will just create, and if it works, it works, and if it doesn't, I'll create something else. I don't have any limitations on what I think I could do or be.”

Being Set at meat Scratch not, neither Spit, Cough, or blow your Nose except there's a Necessity for it.”

“For you will never be what you ought to be until they [your fellow humans] are what they ought to be.”

“I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene….No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus.”

“ I didn’t know you were going. What are you coming for?" she said, letting fall the hand with which she had grasped the doorpost. And irrepressible delight and eagerness shone in her face. "What am I coming for?" he repeated, looking straight into her eyes. "You know that I have come to be where you are," he said, "I can’t help it.”

“Until you have learned to be tolerant with those who do not always agree with you;until you have culrivated the habit of saying some kind word of those whom you do not admire; until you have formed the habit of looking for good instead of the bad there is in others, you will be neither successful nor happy”