“I have always believed that God never gives a cross to bear larger than we can carry. No matter what, he wants us to be happy, not sad. birds sing after a storm. Why shouldn’t we?”

My husband changed jobs so fast that I simply never knew what business he was in.

As motherhood is the greatest and most natural God-given gift for women for posterity, it would seem that the birth and rearing of children, in the way which to us seems most ideal, would be the most satisfying and the most rewarding career for a woman.

I’ve had an exciting time; I married for love and got a little money along with it.

To my mind, there was no one in the world like my father. Wherever he was, there was magic in the air.

I don’t think you’re much good, unless you’re doing good to someone.

It’s wrong for parents to bury their children. It should be the other way around.

What greater aspiration and challenge are there for a mother than the hope of raising a great son or daughter?

There can be no really pervasive system of oppression, such as that in the United States, without the consent of the oppressed.

I tried to allow my children to take risks, to test themselves. Better broken bones than broken spirit.

I don’t think you’re much good, unless you’re doing good to someone.

I know not age, nor weariness nor defeat.

I am not going to be licked by tragedy, as life is a challenge, and we must carry on and work for the living as well as mourn for the dead.

No one will ever feel sorry for me.

Modern candidates seem to have to live with political matters all the time. In my father’s time, a politician’s home was still his castle.

I tried to allow my children to take risks, to test themselves. Better broken bones than broken spirit.

In my life, I am often reminded that there is a destiny that rules over us, because no one whom I know about or whom I read about seems to be completely happy during a long time.

I did not believe political directives could be successfully applied to creative writing . . . not to poetry or fiction, which to be valid had to express as truthfully as possible the individual emotions and reactions of the writer.

I feel very strongly that curves are natural, womanly and real. I shall continue to hope that women are able to believe in themselves for who they are inside, and not feel under such incredible pressure to be unnaturally thin.

One lady told me that before she saw ‘Sounder’ she didn’t believe black people could love each other, have deep relationships in the same way as white people.

But Christ’s lore and his apostles twelve, He taught and first he followed it himself.

I believe that I am in hell, therefore I am there.

I believe we should all know each other, we human carriers of so many pleasurable differences. To not know is to doubt, to shrink from, sidestep or destroy.

It isn’t the things that are happening to us that cause us to suffer, it’s what we say to ourselves about the things that are happening. The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.

Believe in the power of your own voice. The more noise you make, the more accountability you demand from your leaders, the more our world will change for the better.