“I will remain soft in a world marked by hardness.”

Your heart is my shelter, my handmade forever home.

I take a piece of you with me everywhere I go, so my soul never feels alone, and my heart always feels at home.

Peaceful dreams find me pull me from reality in their arms I land.

Grace is found flourishing beneath skin blooming from each scar.

I am the moments and memories from the past tied up with good intentions and mistakes from the future.

Growth is no longer seeking acceptance from those who cannot give it to themselves.

If you want to see the world as it should be, read poetry.

I fell for you dissolved like sugar in tea – completely.

I was quiet, yes but I heard all you never said, your silence read.

When I met my darkness clouds | swirled the night sky | refracted light danced in the wild eyes | freedom came for me.

I don’t want the world but I want you in mine.

You were waiting for the sunset while I was longing for the moonrise.

If hearts are our homes, why do we let others break windows and throw stones?

Whole, loved and worthy just as you are.

From each scar today bloom the flowers of a kinder tomorrow.

You are already more than enough.

Gospel music was the thing that inspired me as a child growing up on a cotton farm, where work was drudgery and it was so hard that when I was in the field I sang all the time.

I wish I were a girl again, half-savage and hardy, and free.

I’m trying to raise the awareness of the troops that, when they deploy and go to war, it’s not just them at war – it’s also their family. Their family is having to go through all the hardships and the stresses.

Sometimes when I think how good my book can be, I can hardly breathe.

The scar will remain, but it is better for a man to lose both arms than his soul; and these hard years, instead of being lost, may be made the most precious of your lives, if they teach you to rule yourselves.

If the day should ever come when we must go, if some day we are compelled to leave the scene of history, we will slam the door so hard that the universe will shake and mankind will stand back in stupefaction.

If you believe in it, and you believe in it hard, it is impossible to fail.

The hard way builds solidly a foundation of confidence that cannot be swept away.