“I would much rather be known as the mother of a great son than the author of a great book or the painter of a great masterpiece.”

My father was a great innovator in public life, but when it came to raising his daughters, no one could have been more conservative.

My father had extravagant notions of my beauty, grace, wit, and charm.

There’s nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view that I hold dear.

It’s our money, and we’re free to spend it any way we please.

Birds sing after a storm. Why shouldn’t we?

I have had quite an interesting life. My husband was quite successful in the movies, and we went out frequently with Gloria Swanson and other stars.

There’s nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view that I hold dear.

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?

It is selfish to concern oneself with tragedies.

The time will come when it will disgust you to look in the mirror.

I tell myself that God gave my children many gifts – spirit, beauty, intelligence, the capacity to make friends and to inspire respect. There was only one gift he held back – length of life.

It has been said, ‘time heals all wounds.’ I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.

More business is lost every year through neglect than through any other cause.

Neither comprehension nor learning can take place in an atmosphere of anxiety.

Any woman who still thinks marriage is a fifty-fifty proposition is only proving that she doesn’t understand either men or percentages.

Money doesn’t give you any license to relax. It gives you an opportunity to use all your abilities, free of financial worries, to go forward, and to use your superior advantages and talents to help others.

A book should be luminous not voluminous.

Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that’s where it should stay.

If it is a distinction to have written a good book, it is also a disgrace to have written a bad one.

My dream is to put together a performance of the evolution of black music with Cirque du Soleil . I would also like to do street opera and children’s books. But even as I work toward these things, I want to simplify my life.

I finished a big book the other day. 421 pages. That’s a lot of coloring when you think about it.

Good books are as friends, willing to give to us if we are willing to make a little effort.

God has a purpose behind every problem. He uses circumstances to develop our character. In fact, he depends more on circumstances to make us like Jesus than he depends on our reading the Bible.

The Koran shows every sign of being thrown together by human beings, as do all the other holy books.