One must know not just how to accept a gift, but with what grace to share it.

Not everything you do is going to be a masterpiece, but you get art there and you try and sometimes it really happens. The other times you’re just stretching your soul.

A person is the product of their dreams. So make sure to dream great dreams. And then try to live your dream.

Have a purpose to your life: Purpose does not mean having a job...You can have a job and still be unfulfilled.

Without courage we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency.

My people couldn't have survived slavery without having hope that it would get better. And there's some songs from the 19th and 18th century that say [sings], "By and by, by and by, I will lay down, this heavy load." And I mean, so many songs that spoke of hope and understand it better by and by. Amazing songs. So that the slaves, just knowing that he, she, did not have the right legally to walk within one inch away from where the slave owner dictated, and yet the same person, wrote and sang with fervor, "If the lord wants somebody, here am I, send me." It's amazing.

Growing up, I decided, a long time ago, I wouldn't accept any manmade differences between human beings, differences made at somebody else's insistence or someone else's whim or convenience.