Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" I respect myself and insist upon it from everybody. And because I do it, I then respect everybody, too. "

Related Quotes:

" I love a Hebrew National hot dog with an ice-cold Corona - no lime. If the phone rings, I won't answer until I'm done. "

" I love the song 'I Hope You Dance' by Lee Ann Womack. I was going to write that song, but someone beat me to it. "

" I believe that each of us comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. "

" When I was 8 years old I became a mute and was a mute until I was 13, and I thought of my whole body as an ear, so I can go into a crowd and sit still and absorb all sound. That talent or ability has lasted and served me until today. "

" You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lines. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I'll rise. "

" Everybody born comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. We come from the Creator with creativity. I think that each one of us is born with creativity. "

" On Saturday afternoons when all the things are done in the house and there's no real work to be done, I play Bach and Chopin and turn it up real loudly and get a good bottle of chardonnay and sit out on my deck and look out at the garden. "

" Modesty is a learned affectation. And as soon as life slams the modest person against the wall, that modesty drops. "

" 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. "

" Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible. "

" Though I do manage to mumble around in about seven or eight languages, English remains the most beautiful of languages. It will do anything. "

" I thank God I'm myself and for the life I'm given to live and for friends and lovers and beloveds, and I thank God for knowing that all those people have already paid for me. "

" Somehow, we have come to the erroneous belief that we are all but flesh, blood, and bones, and that's all. So we direct our values to material things. "

Material Things

" We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated. "

" There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth. "

" The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are. "

" The language of all the interpretations, the translations, of the Judaic Bible and the Christian Bible, is musical, just wonderful. I read the Bible to myself; I'll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to hear the language, hear the rhythm, and remind myself how beautiful English is. "

" There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it. "

" I've still not written as well as I want to. I want to write so that the reader in Des Moines, Iowa, in Kowloon, China, in Cape Town, South Africa, can say, 'You know, that's the truth. I wasn't there, and I wasn't a six-foot black girl, but that's the truth.' "

" I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best - I mean, when I'm at my best - of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music or in my poetry and prose, or I missed everything. "

" Won't it be wonderful when black history and native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history. "

" In so many ways, segregation shaped me, and education liberated me. "

" I do like to have guns around. I don't like to carry them. But I like - if somebody is going to come into my house and I have not put out the welcome mat, I want to stop them. "

" We are braver and wiser because they existed, those strong women and strong men... We are who we are because they were who they were. It's wise to know where you come from, who called your name. "

" I have a feeling that I make a very good friend, and I'm a good mother, and a good sister, and a good citizen. I am involved in life itself - all of it. And I have a lot of energy and a lot of nerve. "

" During bad circumstances, which is the human inheritance, you must decide not to be reduced. You have your humanity, and you must not allow anything to reduce that. We are obliged to know we are global citizens. Disasters remind us we are world citizens, whether we like it or not. "

" In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats - maybe it's imperative that we encounter the defeats - but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike. "

" What humility does for one is it reminds us that there are people before me. I have already been paid for. And what I need to do is prepare myself so that I can pay for someone else who has yet to come but who may be here and needs me. "

" I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. "

" The loss of young first love is so painful that it borders on the ludicrous. "