if you don't exist in the arts of a culture, you're invisible. The arts are what express the soul of who we are and that expresses our humanity.

Tell me who you walk with, and I'll tell you who you are.

For me, the person I was becoming when we left was erased, and another one was created.

How can you know what you're capable of if you don't embrace the unkown?

People think [immigration] is only about the dollar, but it's so much more complex. This is a place where you can reinvent yourself. I don't know that you can do that anywhere else.

What doesn't kill you, makes you fat.

We're always going to have prejudices ... I don't think we can change society. You can only change individual by individual. And you can change yourself.

In the twenty-one years I lived with my mother, we moved at least twenty times.

I dressed to their murmurs in the other room, their voices soft but strained, and I wondered if men ever talked like this, if their sorrows ever spilled into these secret cadences.

I would just as soon remain jamona than shed that many tears over a man.

The good company counts in your life, make a right choice because bad company will eat you alive.

I refuse to use the computers if Google is on them.'Librarian: 'Okay.''--'Librarian: '--''--'Librarian: 'Enjoy your day!

Strong people are made by opposition like kites that go up against the wind.

Fear ringed by doubt is my eternal moon.

Writing headlines is a specialty - there are outstanding writers who will tell you they couldn't write a headline to save their lives.

When you see a woman who can go nowhere without a staff of admirers, it is not so much because they think she is beautiful, it is because she has told them they are handsome.

I find it safer to pursue the powerful, the ugly, the unpleasant.

I think everybody needed to know what had happened to Emmett Till.

The best education you will ever get is traveling. Nothing teaches you more than exploring the world and accumulating experiences.

... my mind lay limp in an empty world.