Every time I think that I’m getting old, and gradually going to the grave, something else happens.

Sooner or later, I hate to break it to you, you’re gonna die, so how do you fill in the space between here and there? It’s yours. Seize your space.

Any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

In difficult times, we’re not supposed to quit believing; we’re not supposed to quit growing.

How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.

Now, you lose something in your life, or you come into a conflict, and there’s gonna come a time that you’re gonna know: There was a reason for that. And at the end of your life, all the things you thought were periods, they turn out to be commas. There was never a full stop in any of it.

I grew up where, when a door closed, a window didn’t open. The only thing I had was cracks. I’d do everything to get through those cracks – scratch, claw, bite, push, bleed. Now the opportunity is here. The door is wide open, and it’s as big as a garage.

Most women in my family start to get sick and start dying in their 40s, and I am going to be very happy to become 50 and 60. I love getting older.

Age doesn’t bother me. So many of my heroes were older guys. It’s the lack of years left that weighs far heavier on me than the age that I am.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

This above all, to refuse to be a victim.

We can feel joy even while having a bad day, a bad week, or even a bad year!

I do believe in the old saying, ‚What does not kill you makes you stronger.‘ Our experiences, good and bad, make us who we are. By overcoming difficulties, we gain strength and maturity.

When you can’t make them see the light, make them feel the heat.

My mother raised me with God. We were poor financially, but we were rich spiritually.

I have never been bewildered for long in any fight with our enemies – I was Armed with Insight.

To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.

With increasing age, dullness of mind and heart sets in.

There are going to be things I’m not going to be great at, times when I make mistakes, 100%.

Why is it so hard for people to believe that white people are poor?! I wouldn’t say I lived in a ghetto; I’d say I lived in the ‚hood. The same friends I had back then are the same people on tour with me now.

If it’s stress of things that we cannot control, what you have to do is you mitigate that stress as much as possible. You’ve planned, you’ve trained, you’ve done everything you can in your power to mitigate the stress that’s facing you. And then after that, there’s nothing you can do. So, you have to let that one go.

I had my moments of being humiliated, and then I had moments of doing something humiliating. I’m glad I lived out both roles.

Brave men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.

One likes people much better when they’re battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph.

Living in America and, of course, just being women in general, we’ve got more strength than we think we do.

You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

There is nothing in the world so much admired as a man who knows how to bear unhappiness with courage.

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.

Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.

The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.

We must begin seeing other creatures as equal. Existence makes us all equal.

Early on in my life, I had a broken soul. I was abused by my father, abandoned by my mother and ended up in a destructive first marriage. By the time I was 23, I was broken in my soul. I didn’t know how to think right. I felt wrong about everything. But God stepped into my life, and I came out on the other side and didn’t even smell like smoke.

I’ve heard there are troubles of more than one kind; some come from ahead, and some come from behind. But I’ve brought a big bat. I’m all ready, you see; now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!

Nobody expects to trust his body overmuch after the age of fifty.

Americans never quit.

Founding a company is hard. Most of it isn’t smooth. You’ll have to make very hard decisions. You have to fire a few people. Therefore, if you don’t believe in your mission, giving up is easy. The majority of founders give up. But the best founders don’t give up.

I don’t think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains.

I’m on record that it didn’t really traumatize me to do away with some people.

We were poor. But my mom never accepted that. She worked hard to become a residential contractor – got her master’s with honors at the University of New Orleans. I used to go to every class with her. Her father was my paternal figure.

It is natural to die as to be born.

When any calamity has been suffered the first thing to be remembered is, how much has been escaped.

Life is so, so short. Bible says it’s like a vapor.

The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.

There are those who believe Black people possess the secret of joy and that it is this that will sustain them through any spiritual or moral or physical devastation.

Probably the happiest period in life most frequently is in middle age, when the eager passions of youth are cooled, and the infirmities of age not yet begun; as we see that the shadows, which are at morning and evening so large, almost entirely disappear at midday.

A well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without getting nervous.

A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.

For years I wanted to be older, and now I am.

Do something everyday for no other reason than you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test.

I think a big test we all face in life on a regular basis is that discouragement test. Life’s not always fair, but I believe if you keep doing the right thing, God will get you to where you are.

I approach love differently now that I know it’s hard for it to work out.

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

Regrets are the natural property of grey hairs.

I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other.

The difference between us and them, between you and success, is not that you never fail, but it’s how you recover from those failures – is that you keep getting up time and time again. You figure out what you did wrong, and then you make it right. I say that to my kids every day.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.

I think it’s good for a woman to put on a bit of weight when she gets older – it looks better. But a man has to stay balanced.