In the grip of a neurological disorder, I am fast losing control of words even as my relationship with the world has been reduced to them.

To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia – to mistake an ordinary young woman for a goddess.

Mothers and daughters generally have fairly complex relationships, and ours was made much more so by Mother’s illness. She had Parkinson’s disease, which was not diagnosed for a long time… All that made me very self-protective, because for one thing, I didn’t want to get trapped.

Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.

When your physical energy and mind combines, it’s great.

I’m grateful for the opportunities God gave me to minister to people in high places; people in power have spiritual and personal needs like everyone else, and often they have no one to talk to.

There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it.

All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.

No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

If it’s going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.

I don’t do Shakespeare. I don’t talk in that kind of broken English.

If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.

He that would live in peace and at ease must not speak all he knows or all he sees.

I am particularly drawn to the form of meditation called Japa. I know it works.

There are always three speeches, for every one you actually gave. The one you practiced, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave.

The PC has improved the world in just about every area you can think of. Amazing developments in communications, collaboration and efficiencies. New kinds of entertainment and social media. Access to information and the ability to give a voice people who would never have been heard.

When a politician uses the word ‚folks,‘ we should brace ourselves for the deceit, or worse, that is coming.

An inability to handle language is not the same thing as stupidity.

Sadness is but a wall between two gardens.

Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don’t believe is right.

It occurred to me that at one point it was like I had two diseases – one was Alzheimer’s, and the other was knowing I had Alzheimer’s.

Instruments sound interesting, not because of their sound, but because of the relationship a player has with them. Instrumentalists build a rapport with their instruments, which is what you like and respond to.

I have already demonstrated, by crucial tests, the practicability of signaling by my system from one to any other point of the globe, no matter how remote, and I shall soon convert the disbelievers.

When I was young, an eccentric uncle decided to teach me how to lie. Not, he explained, because he wanted me to lie, but because he thought I should know how it’s done so I would recognise when I was being lied to.

We have two ears and one tongue so that we would listen more and talk less.

Every man who possibly can should force himself to a holiday of a full month in a year, whether he feels like taking it or not.

I’m not always going to say things the perfect way, the right way. But I’m going to say how I feel.

Y’all are so cute and y’all talk so proper over here. I love England.

Disagreement is something normal.

One of my lungs is half gone, and the other half, because I smoked for years, has a lesion. So I can’t swim anymore and had the swimming pool covered over. Now it’s what I call the dance pavilion, and so I and my friends sit out and put music on and watch people dance.

How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.

The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.

It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

How to drive a guy crazy: send him a telegram and on the top put ‚page 2.‘

The titanic effort that has brought liberation to South Africa, and ensured the total liberation of Africa, constitutes an act of redemption for the black people of the world.

A minute of thought is greater than an hour of talk.

My grandmother is over eighty and still doesn’t need glasses. Drinks right out of the bottle.

Be generous with kindly words, especially about those who are absent.

I like to let things breathe.

Language is one component of the human cognitive capacity which happens to be fairly amenable to enquiry. So we know a good deal about that.

It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear.

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.

When people need love and understanding and support the most is when they deserve it the least.

I was nauseous and tingly all over. I was either in love or I had smallpox.

The problem with having a sense of humor is often that people you use it on aren’t in a very good mood.

People are just afraid of things too much. Afraid of things that don’t necessarily merit fear.

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

There is one way to have a short but exciting conversation with me, and that is to move too slow.

A letter does not blush.

Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.

Some of the most moving experiences I’ve had are just in black churches in the South, during the Civil Rights Movement, where people were getting beaten, killed, really struggling for the most elementary rights.

Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.

Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.

To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it!

Science and mindfulness complement each other in helping people to eat well and maintain their health and well-being.

The strong man is the one who is able to intercept at will the communication between the senses and the mind.

Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.

I’ll think I have a few wonderful friends and all of a sudden, ooh, here it comes. They do a lot of things. They talk about you to the press, to their friends, tell stories, and you know, it’s disappointing.

When you have a conflict, that means that there are truths that have to be addressed on each side of the conflict. And when you have a conflict, then it’s an educational process to try to resolve the conflict. And to resolve that, you have to get people on both sides of the conflict involved so that they can dialogue.

Melancholy, indeed, should be diverted by every means but drinking.

I don’t have many sad days.