I've read everything Thomas Wolfe ever wrote; my brother and I memorized whole chapters of 'You Can't Go Home Again' and 'Look Homeward, Angel.'

I refuse to allow any man-made differences to separate me from any other human beings.

I've learned that forgiving is one of the greatest gifts that I can give myself.

I’m grateful for being here, for being able to think, for being able to see, for being able to taste, for appreciating love – for knowing that it exists in a world so rife with vulgarity, with brutality and violence, and yet love exists. I’m grateful to know that it exists.

Every day offers you 10,000 reasons to cry, but if you can find just one reason to laugh then you will be all right.

Courage allows the successful woman to fail - and to learn powerful lessons from the failure - so that in the end, she didn't fail at all.

Poetry and music are the best at the highest level of the human mind. Out of poetry, out of their need for poetry, human beings have developed the idea of God. And so when we sing, when we dance, when we speak poetry we are speaking out of God's mouth, each other out of the music from God's heart.