I think being able to age gracefully is a very important talent. It is too late for me.

Over the years I’ve learned how to lock myself up in a prison of hope, knowing that God has nothing but His best planned for me. He promised me things concerning my ministry and my life.

I’ve had no contact with my daughter for years. That’s her choice. Anyway, you move on. If people don’t want to bother with me, fine. You know, God bless them, and move on.

I always knew from that moment, from the time I found myself at home in that little segregated library in the South, all the way up until I walked up the steps of the New York City library, I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, I’ll be OK. It really helped me as a child, and that never left me.

One must marry one’s feelings to one’s beliefs and ideas. That is probably the only way to achieve a measure of harmony in one’s life.

I think I mainly climb mountains because I get a great deal of enjoyment out of it. I never attempt to analyze these things too thoroughly, but I think that all mountaineers do get a great deal of satisfaction out of overcoming some challenge which they think is very difficult for them, or which perhaps may be a little dangerous.

A person who is gifted sees the essential point and leaves the rest as surplus.

Knowledge cultivates your seeds and does not sow in your seeds.

I just do the best I can and write something interesting, to tell stories in an interesting way and move forward from there.

Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future.

Just as we develop our physical muscles through overcoming opposition – such as lifting weights – we develop our character muscles by overcoming challenges and adversity.

Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.

I am absolutely my own biggest critic.

Every person above the ordinary has a certain mission that they are called to fulfill.

If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.

I didn’t always have 14,000 people wanting to hang out with me on a Saturday night.

None but ourselves can free our minds.

When I was making the early stuff, I never expected it to be so big. I was in my own kind of bubble. I never wanted to tour; I just wanted to create music and make a diary I could put out into the world. And sometimes, I became the characters.

The roots of the problems we face in the world, in our national life, and in our family and personal lives are spiritual.

For me, education was power.

Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.

The first decade of the twentieth century was not a great time to be born black and poor and female in St. Louis, Missouri, but Vivian Baxter was born black and poor, to black and poor parents. Later she would grow up and be called beautiful. As a grown woman she would be known as the butter-colored lady with the blowback hair.

If you’ve got a talent, protect it.

I like everything. Boyish girls, girlish boys, the heavy and the skinny. Which is a problem when I’m walking down the street.

I feel matured in a way that I’m happy about. I’m at this other stage in my life – and it’s not a bad thing at all.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

Confidence comes from discipline and training.

Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it… that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear.

I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I’ve always been a freak. So I’ve been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I’m one of those people.

The fact is I am not having sex. But I feel absolutely ripe for the, what would you say? plucking?

Forget the past.

People who truly understand what is meant by self-reliance know they must live their lives by ethics rather than rules.

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.

Beauty is not caused. It is.

Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they’re not trying to keep up with you.

I want to be a man who is truthful and who won’t let pride get in the way of my ripping myself open to my partner and saying, ‚Here I am. This is me.‘ I feel there’s something powerful when a man reaches a point in his life when he can be completely vulnerable.

The thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else’s cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God – if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. That’s what I think.

You can change your world by changing your words… Remember, death and life are in the power of the tongue.

I am not made for politics because I am incapable of wanting or accepting the death of the adversary.

Vulnerability is basically uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.

I think people should feel encouraged to be themselves.

Billy Graham is one of my great lifetime heroes. I think he epitomizes the essence of what a Christian leader should be. I have participated in some of his crusades a couple of times in Atlanta. I’ve seen the profound impact he’s had on me personally, and on other people who were not Christians and accepted Christ as Savior.

Remember that your imagination is yours and yours alone. You have the inborn capacity to use it in any way that you choose. No one else is responsible for your imagination. Anything placed in your imagination and held there ultimately becomes your reality.

The reason I talk to myself is that I’m the only one whose answers I accept.

Meditation has been a loyal friend to me. It has helped me write my books.

Self-interest is the enemy of all true affection.

By indignities men come to dignities.

Do your duty and a little more and the future will take care of itself.

To be honest, I never really considered myself to be too much of an actress. So, whenever I get the chance to do music, I’m always, like, just in it. It’s like, ‚Oh my God, I finally get to do this. I’m so happy.‘

I feel like this: Whatever is in your path and in your heart, you need to do.

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.

Solitude is independence.

I always tell young girls, surround yourself with goodness. I learned early on how to get the haters out of my life.

You have to take risks. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.

The advice I’ve been giving to people all my life – that you may not be interested in the dialectic but the dialectic is interested in you; you can’t give up politics, it won’t give you up – was the advice I should have been taking myself.

I don’t see how people are comfortable with seeing other people be great. You can be happy for anybody, but what is your excuse to not want to be great? These people are great because they just say, ‚I’ma do that,‘ and they do it. That’s it. There’s no scientifical process.

We construct a narrative for ourselves, and that’s the thread that we follow from one day to the next. People who disintegrate as personalities are the ones who lose that thread.

It says nothing against the ripeness of a spirit that it has a few worms.

It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.

I like to recede away from classifications. You might say that indicates a fundamental lack of commitment. I suppose that’s true to some degree.

It no longer bothers me that I may be constantly searching for father figures; by this time, I have found several and dearly enjoyed knowing them all.