Prayer had always struck me as more or less a glorified attempt at a business transaction.

Hope is a renewable option: If you run out of it at the end of the day, you get to start over in the morning.

If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life.

Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can't even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain.

Finally, cooking is good citizenship. It's the only way to get serious about putting locally raised foods into your diet, which keeps farmlands healthy and grocery money in the neighborhood.

We came from Bethlehem, Georgia bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle.

Maybe life doesn't get any better than this, or any worse, and what we get is just what we're willing to find: small wonders, where they grow.

Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.

It's what you do that makes your soul.

Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier.

A rich, robust, well-resourced public education is one of the best routes out of poverty and a pathway to prosperity.

I can't really change my life to accommodate people who are jealous. I don't see why I should.

The suburbs are incredibly oppressive. I actually believe that the suburbs are much more dangerous than the ghettos.

That is Obama's signature move: Invent people who are saying ridiculous things and then encourage the audience to laugh at these made-up buffoons.

By painting colors and lines and forms seen in quickened mood I was seeking to make this mood vibrate as a phonograph does. This was the origin of the paintings in The Frieze of Life.

Small minds are much distressed by little things. Great minds see them all but are not upset by them.

We need to make it easier for companies to invest in good jobs here at home.

When dealing with children there is greater need for observing than of probing

I don't have a life-style, I have a life.

All of the truly important battles are waged within the self. (7)