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...
Won't it be wonderful when black history and native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history.
If we accept being talked to any kind of a way, then we are telling ourselves we are not quite worth the best. And if we have the effrontery to talk to anybody with less than courtesy, we tell ourselv...
Writing and cookery are just two different means of communication.
I never expected anyone to take care of me, but in my wildest dreams and juvenile yearnings, I wanted the house with the picket fence from June Allyson movies. I knew that was yearning like one yearns...
When I walk in, they may like me or dislike me, but everybody knows I'm here
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
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 poetry you read has been written for you, each of you - black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight.
I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.
I work very hard, and I play very hard. I'm grateful for life. And I live it - I believe life loves the liver of it. I live it.
First best is falling in love. Second best is being in love. Least best is falling out of love. But any of it is better than never having been in love.
Self-pity in its early stages is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.
The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are.
I keep a hotel room in my town, although I have a large house. And I go there at about 5:30 in the morning, and I start working. And I don't allow anybody to come in that room. I work on yellow pads a...
Once you appreciate one of your blessings, one of your senses, your sense of hearing, then you begin to respect the sense of seeing and touching and tasting, you learn to respect all the senses.
I've learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you'll miss them when they're gone from your life.
Out of the huts of history's shameI riseUp from a past that's rooted in painI riseI'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.Leaving behind nights of terror and fearI...
To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colors of a rainbow.
When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.