She was ugly, was all they'd told her. But she didn't find them beautiful, so what did it matter?

Because a shadow was a thing that defined itself, and Nettie didn't have to fit anyone else's shape.

So not every person fits into the little rooms we build to hold them. There are infinite combinations of human and inhuman, male and female, brown and white.

Nobody can change who you are, except for you.

Be simple but think great to be great.

Gratitude is where every positive attitude starts.

It is a truism but it is still true that the longer one knows people the less relevant it becomes whether or not one liked them initially.

Why is it that at the very moment I need to appear graceful I stumble and fall like a klutz, as though this scene had never played through my mind differently a million times?

Praying privately in churches, I began to discover that heaven was my true home and also that it was here and now, woven into this life.

Breathe and don't try to be perfect.

I was born in the 50s, my mom was pregnant in the 50s, [Frank] Sinatra had that big come back around then, From Here to Eternity.

If you need drugs to be a good writer, you are not a good writer.