When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.

I have great respect for the past. If you don't know where you've come from, you don't know where you're going. I have respect for the past, but I'm a person of the moment. I'm here, and I do my best to be completely centered at the place I'm at, then I go forward to the next place.

If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.

You are the sum total of everything you've ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot - it's all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive.

Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.

Nothing will work unless you do.

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are.

Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.

Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.

The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

It's one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody.

The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.

A wise woman wishes to be no one's enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone's victim.

Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.

If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.

I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.

I learned a long time ago the wisest thing I can do is be on my own side, be an advocate for myself and others like me.

One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.

I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.

My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.

I'm convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they're stones that don't matter. As long as you're breathing, it's never too late to do some good.

All great achievements require time.

The thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else's cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God - if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. That's what I think.

There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.

Eating is so intimate. It's very sensual. When you invite someone to sit at your table and you want to cook for them, you're inviting a person into your life.

I have a son, who is my heart. A wonderful young man, daring and loving and strong and kind.

If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.

What is a fear of living? It's being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility for yourself - for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don't know what you're here to do, then just do some good.

Whatever you want to do, if you want to be great at it, you have to love it and be able to make sacrifices for it.

Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.

Independence is a heady draught, and if you drink it in your youth, it can have the same effect on the brain as young wine does. It does not matter that its taste is not always appealing. It is addictive and with each drink you want more.

My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.

I'm just someone who likes cooking and for whom sharing food is a form of expression.

If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.

While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God's creation.

I am grateful to be a woman. I must have done something great in another life.

In the flush of love's light, we dare be brave. And suddenly we see that love costs all we are, and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.

How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!

Won't it be wonderful when black history and native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history.

You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lines. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I'll rise.

I work very hard, and I play very hard. I'm grateful for life. And I live it - I believe life loves the liver of it. I live it.

It is impossible to struggle for civil rights, equal rights for blacks, without including whites. Because equal rights, fair play, justice, are all like the air: we all have it, or none of us has it. That is the truth of it.

Life loves the liver of it.

I got my own back.

We are braver and wiser because they existed, those strong women and strong men... We are who we are because they were who they were. It's wise to know where you come from, who called your name.

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: 'I'm with you kid. Let's go.'

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

I respect myself and insist upon it from everybody. And because I do it, I then respect everybody, too.

I believe that every person is born with talent.

I did work in a strip club, but I didn't strip. I danced, and I became very popular.

I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.