“It was painful, but time pushed us all forward.”

Bullies were scared people hiding inside scary people.

I’ve learned that it’s harder to hate up close.

The choice, as he saw it, was this: You give up or you work for change. What’s better for us? Barack called to the people gathered in the room. Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be?

You don’t really know how attached you are until you move away, until you’ve experienced what it means to be dislodged, a cork floating on the ocean of another place.

Time, as far as my father was concerned, was a gift you gave to other people.

I began to understand that his version of hope reached far beyond mine: It was one thing to get yourself out of a stuck place, I realized. It was another thing entirely to try and get the place itself unstuck.

It hurts to live after someone has died. It just does.

His money went largely toward books, which to him were like sacred objects, providing ballast for his mind.

We were planting seeds of change, the fruit of which we might never see. We had to be patient.

It’s easier to hold onto your own stereotypes and misconceptions, it makes you feel justified in your own ignorance. That’s America. So the challenge for us is, are we ready for change?

For me, marriage was more like a full-on merger, a reconfiguring of two lives into one, with the well-being of a family taking precedence over any one agenda or goal.

there’s no straight line between effort and reward.

You find ways to adapt. If you’re in it forever, there’s really no choice.

No one, I realized, was going to look out for me unless I pushed for it.

My daughters are the heart of my heart and the center of my world.

Failure is a feeling long before it becomes an actual result

I may not see or feel it instantly, but I know it’s there and with time that blessing will uncover itself.

After the flood, the colors were brightened demand tears of pain to feel so enlightened. Lassoed hope from the clouds that caused it to rain, divine intervention to feel love again.

When life is hard, take it back to the basics.

On my worst days, I give the devil hell. On my best day, I hold a light for God to dwell.

In order to break through barriers, you gotta be ok with being tired.

On my most dreary days, hand me a map of Europe and a cup of tea and just wait for my dreams to encapsulate my soul.

Hope isn’t about pretending that dark times don’t exist, its all about believing that darkness will not forever.

This, too, will pass.