Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different.
I did get knocked down flat in front of the whole world, and I rose. I didn't run away - I rose right where I'd been knocked down. And then that's how you get to know yourself. You say, hmm, I can get up!
A career is born in public - talent in privacy.
The love of the family, the love of one person can heal. It heals the scars left by a larger society. A massive, powerful society.
Men are less sentimental than women. No man has ever seen the movie THE WAY WE WERE twice, voluntarily.
There are some people who physically are not beautiful. But the way they are, the way they treat people, they become beautiful, and you forget all about [their looks].
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.
You can't be consistently fair, consistently generous, consistently just, or consistently merciful. You can be anything erratically, but to be that thing time after time after time, you have to have courage.
It's not easy being grateful all the time. But it's when you feel least thankful that you are most in need of what gratitude can give you
My husband always felt that a marriage and career don't mix. That's why he's never worked.
Fang can't stand to see trash & garbage lying around the house. He can't stand the competition.
Life is tough enough without having someone kick you from the inside.
Life is a glorious banquet, a limitless and delicious buffet.
You are who you are at this moment because of everything that's ever happened to you, everything that you carried forward for yourself.
I did not, thank the Lord, have to have a hysterectomy.
Men love to be the first to read the newspaper in the morning. Not being the first is upsetting to their psyches.
Fear is stupid. So are regrets.
Someday I want to have children and give them all the love I never had.
I used to get my hair dyed at a place called Big Hair. It cost $15. They just used straight bleach, so my hair was the color of white lined paper, and my eyebrows looked like they were done with a thick black marker.
Women want men, careers, money, children, friends, luxury, comfort, independence, freedom, respect, love, and a three-dollar pantyhose that won't run.
You should be angry. You must not be bitter. Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. It doesn't do anything to the object of its displeasure. So use that anger. You write it. You paint it. You dance it. You march it. You vote it. You do everything about it. You talk it. Never stop talking it.
I am a firm believer that every few years one needs to shake one's life through a sieve, like a miner in the Yukon. The gold nuggets remain. The rest falls through like the soft earth it is.
You have to choose love ... in the most difficult of time to shift the paradigm to that which is love.
My husband gave me a necklace. It's fake. I requested fake. Maybe I'm paranoid, but in this day and age, I don't want something around my neck that's worth more than my head.
If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat. It is an unnecessary insult.
I'm like a cartoon! I'll look this way when I'm eighty. I can see it now, people will be rolling me around in a wheelchair and I'll still have my big hair, nails, my high heels and my boobs stuck out!
I embrace everybody for who and what they are.
It's great at this stage in my life to still be in the running, that people appreciate you.
I will not sit in a room with black people when the N word is used. I know it was meant to belittle a person, so I will not sit there and have that poison put on me. Now a black person can say, 'Oh, you know, I can use this word because I'm black.'
Talented men are not threatened by talented women. They welcome them. And same way with real men.
There is a science of war, but how strange that there isn't a science of peace. There are colleges of war; why can’t we study peace?
My life has been very full.
Earlier today former Vermont Governor Howard Dean became the new head of the Democratic National Committee -- no word on who will be the neck.
When I learn something, when I know something, when I find something. I always want to share it. Because life is better when you share it.
Let me tell you, a discussion that starts, 'I'll tell you something you do that irritates me, if you tell me something I do that bothers you,' never ends in a hug and a kiss.
I am a person who lives my life based on intention. I don't do anything without intention because intention determines the outcome of your life. It's like cause and effect.
It is wonderful to have someone praise you, to be desired.
My fat never made me less money.
Whoever said money can't buy happiness wasn't spending it helping people who needed it.
The more there is, the less I want. The more man flies to the moon, the more I want to look at a tree.
I have a good attitude. And I was born with a happy heart. I'm always looking for things to be better.
You teach people how to treat you.
You can never be great at anything unless you love it.
Happiness is the most important thing in the world, without it, you live a life of depression.
The answer to a lot of your life's questions is often in someone else's face. People's faces will tell you amazing things. Like if they are angry, or nauseous, or asleepTry to keep your mind open to possibilities and your mouth closed on matters that you don't know about. Limit your 'always' and your 'nevers.' Continue to share your heart with people even if it has been broken.
If you happen to fall in love with someone in another race, it's more difficult, because you have to translate yourself.
A man has more character in his face at forty than at twenty - he has suffered longer.
Make no a complete sentence.
All the money in the world doesn't mean a thing if you don't have time to enjoy it.
Getting old is like climbing a mountain; you get a little out of breath, but the view is much better!
Important people are much more interesting when they are drunk and seem much more like human beings.
When you think about it, what other playwrights are there besides O'Neill, Tennessee and me?
Laugh and dare to try to love somebody, starting with yourself. You must love yourself first, of course, and you must protect yourself so that nobody overrides you, overrules you, or steps on you. Just say, 'Just a minute. I'm worth everything, dear.'
I will look after you and I will look after anybody you say needs to be looked after, any way you say. I am here. I brought my whole self to you. I am your mother.
Leadership is about empathy. It is about having the ability to relate to and connect with people for the purpose of inspiring and empowering their lives.
Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannot influence neither speed up nor slow down add to nor diminish it is an imponderably valuable gift.
Women should be tough, tender, laugh as much as possible, and live long lives.
Take care of the small circle around you. When you have succeeded with them, then move outwards, one small step at a time.
The plague of racism is insidious, entering into our minds as smoothly and quietly and invisibly as floating airborne microbes enter into our bodies to find lifelong purchase in our bloodstreams.
Let choice whisper in your ear and love murmur in your heart. Be ready. Here comes life.
