“We should always have three friends in our lives-one who walks ahead who we look up to and follow; one who walks beside us, who is with us every step of our journey; and then, one who we reach back for and bring along after we’ve cleared the way.”

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.

It was painful, but time pushed us all forward.

It’s remarkable how a stereotype functions as an actual trap. How many angry black women have been caught in the circular logic of that phrase? When you aren’t being listened to, why wouldn’t you get louder? If you’re written off as angry or emotional, doesn’t that just cause more of the same?

Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.

We spend precious hours fearing the inevitable. It would be wise to use that time adoring our families, cherishing our friends and living our lives.

Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre.

Never lie to people, because the people you are able to lie to, are the people who trust you.

Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives.

So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good.

It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart: the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you.

There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.