From her gospel-singing mother Cissy Houston, her legendary pop-diva cousin Dionne Warwick, and her Queen of Soul godmother Aretha Franklin, she [Whitney Houston] inherited gifts for skillfully interpreting lyrics and endowing them with new depth and jeweled nuance.

Here are lips of flame eager to be extinguished by love's liquid sigh.

The same hot lightning that burns your blood with passion–– cools your fears with peace.

Journey through the Power of the Rainbow represents a condensed compendium of literary efforts from a life dedicated to transforming the themes of injustice, grief, and despair that we all encounter during some unavoidable point of our existence into a sustainable life-affirming poetics of passionate creativity, empowered spiritual vision, and inspired commitment.

The thorn is a bridge spanning the muddy depths of agony and sorrow so that one may on the other side dance to the drums of the rose of joy.

A world without poetry and art would be too much like one without birds or flowers: bearable but a lot less enjoyable.

At its most dynamic, faith evolves into powerful applicable knowledge.