When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.

If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.

Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.

The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.

I have great respect for the past. If you don't know where you've come from, you don't know where you're going. I have respect for the past, but I'm a person of the moment. I'm here, and I do my best to be completely centered at the place I'm at, then I go forward to the next place.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.

Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.

We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.

You are the sum total of everything you've ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot - it's all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive.

Nothing will work unless you do.

I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.

Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.

The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.

A wise woman wishes to be no one's enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone's victim.

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

It's one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody.

If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.

I'm convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they're stones that don't matter. As long as you're breathing, it's never too late to do some good.

It is impossible to struggle for civil rights, equal rights for blacks, without including whites. Because equal rights, fair play, justice, are all like the air: we all have it, or none of us has it. That is the truth of it.

I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.

What is a fear of living? It's being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility for yourself - for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don't know what you're here to do, then just do some good.

One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

I learned a long time ago the wisest thing I can do is be on my own side, be an advocate for myself and others like me.

I have a son, who is my heart. A wonderful young man, daring and loving and strong and kind.

I'm just someone who likes cooking and for whom sharing food is a form of expression.

All great achievements require time.

If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.

If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: 'I'm with you kid. Let's go.'

I am grateful to be a woman. I must have done something great in another life.

Bitterness is cancer - it eats upon the host. It doesn't do anything to the object of its displeasure.

Whatever you want to do, if you want to be great at it, you have to love it and be able to make sacrifices for it.

We are braver and wiser because they existed, those strong women and strong men... We are who we are because they were who they were. It's wise to know where you come from, who called your name.

Most people don't grow up. It's too damn difficult. What happens is most people get older. That's the truth of it. They honor their credit cards, they find parking spaces, they marry, they have the nerve to have children, but they don't grow up.

My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.

The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.

I respect myself and insist upon it from everybody. And because I do it, I then respect everybody, too.

I got my own back.

Eating is so intimate. It's very sensual. When you invite someone to sit at your table and you want to cook for them, you're inviting a person into your life.

The thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else's cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God - if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. That's what I think.

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.

How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!

While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God's creation.

The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are.

There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.

My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.

If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.

Find a beautiful piece of art. If you fall in love with Van Gogh or Matisse or John Oliver Killens, or if you fall love with the music of Coltrane, the music of Aretha Franklin, or the music of Chopin - find some beautiful art and admire it, and realize that that was created by human beings just like you, no more human, no less.

Everybody born comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. We come from the Creator with creativity. I think that each one of us is born with creativity.

I did work in a strip club, but I didn't strip. I danced, and I became very popular.

You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lines. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I'll rise.

Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.

The love of the family, the love of one person can heal. It heals the scars left by a larger society. A massive, powerful society.

The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.