Not everyone's life is what they make it. Some people's life is what other people make it.

Wherever I have knocked, a door has opened. Wherever I have wandered, a path has appeared.

Our mothers and grandmothers ... moving to music not yet written.

You can't truly have an open heart until it's been broken.

She say, Celie, tell the truth, have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show.

Part of what confuses people in times of upheaval is that you're getting so many different points of view and directions and so and so, how to do this and do that. And a lot of it is written in a language that honestly most people cannot understand.

Creation is a sustained period of bliss, even though the subject can still be very sad. Because there's the triumph of coming through and understanding that you have, and that you did it the way only you could do it. You didn't do it the way somebody told you to do it. You did it just the way you had to do it, and that is what makes us us.