“The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.”

Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.

If you’re treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person.

American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.

Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.

There are few things under heaven more unnerving than the silent, accumulating contempt and hatred of a people.

The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he or she has become a threat.

Our crown has already been bought and paid for. All we have to do is wear it.

True rebels after all, are as rare as true lovers,and in both cases, to mistake a fever for passion can destroy one’s life.

Colour is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality.

Trust life, and it will teach you, in joy and sorrow, all you need to know.

You don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back.

Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.

Literature is indispensable to the world.

It is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.

If I am not what you say I am, then you are not who you think you are.

Hatred is always self hatred, and there is something suicidal about it.

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?

Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once.

But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.

Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves even when we risk disappointing others.

Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness.

When you find your path, you must not be afraid. You need to have sufficient courage to make mistakes. Disappointment, defeat, and despair are the tools God uses to show us the way.

I know what I want, I have a goal, an opinion, I have a religion and love. Let me be myself and then I am satisfied. I know that I’m a woman, a woman with inward strength and plenty of courage.

Men often bear little grievances with less courage than they do large misfortunes.