...our best task is to move forward without insisting others slide backward.

There's always a part of your nation's history that you haven't been told that... has a powerful impact on how you yourself may behave and may believe.

How strange to read of a place in a book, and then stand on it, listen to the birds sing, and spit on the cobbles if you want.

If you can't dress expensive, dress memorable.

What I want is so simple I almost can't say it: elementary kindness.

There were two things about Mama. One is she always expected the best out of me. And the other is that then no matter what I did, whatever I came home with, she acted like it was the moon I had just hung up in the sky and plugged in all the stars. Like I was that good.

What we end up calling history is a kind of knife, slicing down through time. A few people are hard enough to bend its edge. But most won't even stand close to the blade. I'm one of those. We don't bend anything.