Reality has changed chameleonlike before my eyes so many times that I have learned, or am learning, to trust almost anything except what appears to be so.

If you're going to live, leave a legacy. Make a mark on the world that can't be erased.

"Baby, you know?" my mother once said to me. "I think you're the greatest woman I've ever met - and I'm not including my mother or Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt in that." She said, "You are very intelligent and you're very kind, and those two qualities do not often go together." Then she went across the street and got in her car, and I went the other way down to the streetcar. I thought, "Suppose she's right. She's intelligent - and she's too mean to lie." You see, a parent has the chance - and maybe the responsibility - to liberate her child. And my mom had liberated me when I was 17.

Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good.

Growing up at my grandmother's table, she always had rice. She might do something as exotic as potatoes or spaghetti, but there was still always rice, just in case you needed a little rice fix.

I am always talking about the human condition and about American society in particular: what it is like to be human, what makes us weep, what makes us fall and stumble and somehow rise and go on from darkness into darkness and that darkness carpeted.

I wasn't a pretty girl. I was six feet tall at 15, you know.