You have to be willing to think the unthinkable.

The habit of getting up early, which I had formed when the children were young, now became my choice. I am not very bright or very witty or very inventive after the sun goes down.

My daddy's face is a study. Winter moves into it and presides there. His eyes become a cliff of snow threatening to avalanche, his eyebrows bend like black limbs of leafless trees. His skin takes on the pale cheerless yellow of winter sun; for a jaw he has the edges of a snowbound field dotted with stubble; his high forehead is the frozen sweep of the Erie.

Misery colored by the greens and blues in my mother's voice took away all the grief out of the words and left me with a conviction that pain was not only endurable, it was sweet.

I wish I’d a knowed more people. I would of loved ‘em all. If I’d a knowed more, I would a loved more

A lot of black people believe that Jews in this country have become white. They behave like white people rather than Jewish people.

Make a difference about something other than yourselves.