Poverty was an ornament on a learned man like a red ribbon on a white horse.

I'm one of the millions of immigrant children, children of loneliness, wandering between worlds that are at once too old and too new to live in.

The only compensation for the artist is the chance to feed hungry hearts.

If I had never met him I would have dreamed him into being.

I too was frightened the first time I felt I hated my father. I felt like a criminal. But could I help it what was inside of me? I had to feel what I felt even if it killed me.

This fire in me, it's not just the hunger of a woman for a man - it's the hunger of all my people back of me, from all ages, for light, for the life higher!

Without comprehension, the immigrant would forever remain shut - a stranger in America. Until America can release the heart as well as train the hand of the immigrant, he would forever remain driven back upon himself, corroded by the very richness of the unused gifts within his soul.