“You can’t make decisions based on fear and the possibility of what might happen.”

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

Fulfillment, I’m sure, struck her as a rich person’s conceit.

As a kid, you learn to measure long before you understand the size or value of anything. Eventually, if you’re lucky, you learn that you’ve been measuring all wrong.

Friendships between women, as any woman will tell you, are built of a thousand small kindnesses, swapped back and forth and over again.

The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity.

A real decision is measured by the fact that you’ve taken a new action. If there’s no action, you haven’t truly decided.

I don’t regret any of the life decisions I’ve made in my life because with every choice I’ve made I’ve learned something new.

My school had a radio show, and when I first decided to become a rapper, I was on there, and I would, like, freestyle.

The things that we decide to run from are the truth. When you make excuses, you’re running from the truth.

I’m a prisoner to my addiction I’m addicted to a life that’s so empty and so cold I’m a prisoner to my decisions.

Once you’ve made a decision, let providence be your guide.

Never make a decision in anger and never make a promise in happiness.