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

I always have felt that elders are really important. I think it's because, in my little Southern black culture, elders really were respected. Everybody listened to them. They may not have agreed - that's a whole different story - but they would totally listen and consider what the elder had to say.

It no longer bothers me that I may be constantly searching for father figures; by this time, I have found several and dearly enjoyed knowing them all.

Every small positive change we make in ourselves repays us in confidence in the future.

In order to be able to live at all in America I must be unafraid to live anywhere in it, and I must be able to live in the fashion and with whom I choose.

How we come into this world, how we are ushered in, met, and hopefully embraced upon arrival, impacts the whole of our time on earth.

How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers names.