“My daughters are the heart of my heart and the center of my world.”

Now I think it’s one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child – What do you want to be when you grow up? As if growing up is finite. As if at some point you become something and that’s the end.

People who are truly strong lift others up. People who are truly powerful bring others together.

I just wanted to achieve. Or maybe I didn’t want to be dismissed as incapable of achievement.

Am I good enough? Yes, I am.

Even white people were recognizing him now.

I’ve smiled for photos with people who call my husband horrible names on national television, but still want a framed keepsake for their mantel.

Do not bring people in your life who weigh you down. And trust your instincts, good relationships feel good. They feel right. They don’t hurt. They’re not painful. That’s not just with somebody you want to marry, but it’s with the friends that you choose. It’s with the people you surround yourselves with.

Trump, with his loud and reckless innuendos, was putting my family’s safety at risk. And for this, I’d never forgive him.

Even if we didn’t know the context, we were instructed to remember that context existed. Everyone on earth, they’d tell us, was carrying around an unseen history, and that alone deserved some tolerance.

Look how I’m managing, I wanted to say in those moments, to my audience of no one. Does everyone see that I’m pulling this off?

In my blinding drive to excel, in my need to do things perfectly, I’d missed the signs and taken the wrong road.

The more popular you became, the more haters you acquired.

I have had to learn that my voice has value. And if I don’t use it, what’s the point of being in the room?

Marriage, he told me early on, struck him as an unnecessary and overhyped convention.

Even if we didn’t know the context, we were instructed to remember that context existed. Everyone on earth, they’d tell us, was carrying around an unseen history, and that alone deserved some tolerance.

The punches hurt, even if I understood that they had little to do with who I really was as a person.

There’s a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep ’em all away from you. That’s never possible.

Won’t someone please answer my prayers before I’m old and gray. I’ve been lonely too long and all my family thinks I’m gay.

People were incredibly kind to our family and went out of their way to help.

I have three kids, and that’s a big part of staying focused.

We don’t really have any big family traditions; just spending time with each other is the most important part.

Friendships are the family we make – not the one we inherit. I’ve always been someone to whom friendship, elective affinities, is as important as family.

I can buy anything I want now. It hasn’t changed me personally. It just changed what I can do for myself and my family.

No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.