Poverty was an ornament on a learned man like a red ribbon on a white horse.

When I only begin to read, I forget I'm on this world. It lifts me on wings with high thoughts.

As one of the dumb, voiceless ones I speak. One of the millions of immigrants beating, beating out their hearts at your gates for a breath of understanding.

Like all people who have nothing, I lived on dreams.

In America, money takes the place of God.

A man is free to go up as high as he can reach up to; but I, with all my style and pep, can't get a man my equal because a girl is always judged by her mother.

Poor people who had escaped from poverty as I had, feared it, hated it and fled from it all their lives. Those born rich could afford to be touched by it.

The power that makes grass grow, fruit ripen, and guides the bird in flight is in us all.

I'm one of the millions of immigrant children, children of loneliness, wandering between worlds that are at once too old and too new to live in.

The only compensation for the artist is the chance to feed hungry hearts.

I too was frightened the first time I felt I hated my father. I felt like a criminal. But could I help it what was inside of me? I had to feel what I felt even if it killed me.

If you're still hanging onto a dead dream of yesterday, laying flowers on its grave by the hour, you cannot be planting the seeds for a new dream to grow today

The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where "ordinary" life fails to answer a median need for dignity and comfort.

I think about all the ways I’ve been perceived by others over the years: as a burden, a dutiful daughter, a girlfriend, a spiteful wretch, an inva

...For I do now know that it is cowardly. We do not have the right to think only of poetry on this earth. It is magical, but utterly selfish.

We know the human brain is a device to keep the ears from grating on one another.

Jihad and the rifle alone. NO negotiations, NO conferences and NO dialogue

In the act of deciding what to eliminate, you place value on what's left behind.

One of the best ways of enslaving a people is to keep them from education.

I am not accustomed to take my wine in pills.

I suppose we're not supposed to judge people.