I have lived and slept in the same bed with English countesses and Prussian farm women… no woman has excited passions among women more than I have.

We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same.

I grew up in a very nice house in Houston, went to private school all my life and I’ve never even been to the ‚hood. Not that there’s anything wrong with the ‚hood.

Love is an interesting thing.

If you want to sacrifice the admiration of many men for the criticism of one, go ahead, get married.

A friend will tell you she saw your old boyfriend – and he’s a priest.

Politics doesn’t make strange bedfellows – marriage does.

There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools and she was bused to school every day. That little girl was me.

It’s always wonderful to get to know women, with the mystery and the joy and the depth. If you can make a woman laugh, you’re seeing the most beautiful thing on God’s Earth.

My life has been very full.

There are certain pursuits which, if not wholly poetic and true, do at least suggest a nobler and finer relation to nature than we know. The keeping of bees, for instance.

You can close more business in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get people interested in you.

We’re a diverse society, and I think the TV is doing a great job in showing that we’re all human beings, that we can all get along, that we can all be together, and I think that’s a marvelous thing.

It is easy to say how we love new friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibers that knit us to the old.

It’s true that I’ve never had a burning desire to rebel against my parents.

It is most unwise for people in love to marry.

Building capacity dissolves differences. It irons out inequalities.

You have to give others the opportunity to love who you love. If they don’t accept it, it’s their loss.

The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.

I think what it really is, is that I date creative people. And I think that what intimidates them is not my purse; it’s my mind.

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.

The poor are discussed as this homogeneous mash, like porridge. The idea that they might be individuals, and be where they are for very different, diverse reasons, again seems to escape some people.

Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.

The second time around, I’ll understand that, as a husband, my wife doesn’t care about my opinions. I just need to tell her the things that will continue to help me stack the brownie points.

My songs have always been frustrating themes, relationships that I’ve had. And now that I’m in love, I expect it to be really happy, or at least there won’t be half as much anger as there was.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.

I have an urge to communicate. I think I’m a change from what it would be like dating a normal guy who doesn’t talk too much.

You can’t be in love with a Google search.

Irrespective of age, we mourn for those loved and lost. Mourning is one of the deepest expressions of pure love.

Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get – only with what you are expecting to give – which is everything.

When love beckons to you, follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.

Sometimes it’s a form of love just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and still be fascinated by their presence.

It used to be the case, like you’d switch jobs, and then maybe you wouldn’t keep in touch with all the people that you knew from that old job, just because it was too hard. But one of the things that Facebook does is it makes it really easy to just stay in touch with all these people.

My husband says I look like a Q-tip.

You’re unlikely to discover something new without a lot of practice on old stuff, but further, you should get a heck of a lot of fun out of working out funny relations and interesting things.

The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.

He that loves to be flattered is worthy o‘ the flatterer.

All men hate the nagging.

There is not a liberal America and a conservative America – there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and latino America and asian America – there’s the United States of America.

Remember that creating a successful marriage is like farming: you have to start over again every morning.

I think what motivates people is not great hate, but great love for other people.

There is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than marriage.

Consult your friend on all things, especially on those which respect yourself. His counsel may then be useful where your own self-love might impair your judgment.

I try to see the good in everybody, and I don’t care who people are as long as they’re themselves, whatever that is.

Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.

Here in America, we don’t let our differences tear us apart. Not here. Because we know that our greatness comes from when we appreciate each other’s strengths, when we learn from each other, when we lean on each other, because in this country, it’s never been each person for themselves. No, we’re all in this together. We always have been.

I don’t dislike any of my exes. If I took time to form a relationship, it’s gonna hurt when we move on, but are you puttin‘ White-Out over all that beautiful time together? That was real time in your life. It’s connected to where you are today.

Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.

For a while… to be an evangelical meant you were a white Republican, and you were against this and against that. I don’t want to be put into that mold, because then people judge you before they even listen… I don’t want to divide the very people I am trying to reach.

It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

Part of our tradition as black women is that we are universalists. Black children, yellow children, red children, brown children, that is the black woman’s normal, day-to-day relationship. In my family alone, we are about four different colors.

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating – people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.

Until blacks and whites see each other as brother and sister, we will not have parity. It’s very clear.

When I was a child I asked my mother what homosexuality was about and she said – and this was 100 years ago in Germany and she was very open-minded – ‚It’s like hair color. It’s nothing. Some people are blond and some people have dark hair. It’s not a subject.‘ This was a very healthy attitude.

How do I know about a man’s needs for a sex symbol? I’m a girl.

Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, a possession for all time.

Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

Love matches, so called, have illusion for their father and need for their mother.

I will never be happy without having someone. Going to sleep alone kills me.

My friends, there are no friends.