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" Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise. "

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" If we accept being talked to any kind of a way, then we are telling ourselves we are not quite worth the best. And if we have the effrontery to talk to anybody with less than courtesy, we tell ourselves and the world we are not very intelligent. "

" Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him. "

" I've read everything Thomas Wolfe ever wrote; my brother and I memorized whole chapters of 'You Can't Go Home Again' and 'Look Homeward, Angel.' "

" My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return. "

" You can't forgive without loving. And I don't mean sentimentality. I don't mean mush. I mean having enough courage to stand up and say, 'I forgive. I'm finished with it.' "

" When I cook for my family on Christmas, I make feijoada, a South American dish of roasted and smoked meats like ham, pork, beef, lamb, and bacon - all served with black beans and rice. It's festive but different. "

" 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. "

" Whenever I want to laugh, I read a wonderful book, 'Children's Letters to God.' You can open it anywhere. One I read recently said, 'Dear God, thank you for the baby brother, but what I prayed for was a puppy.' "

" You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them. "

" Like a pianist runs her fingers over the keys, I'll search my mind for what to say. Now, the poem may want you to write it. And then sometimes you see a situation and think, 'I'd like to write about that.' Those are two different ways of being approached by a poem, or approaching a poem. "

" 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. "

" If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die. "

" 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. "

" Whatever you want to do, if you want to be great at it, you have to love it and be able to make sacrifices for it. "

" It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength. "

" To take a few nouns, and a few pronouns, and adverbs and adjectives, and put them together, ball them up, and throw them against the wall to make them bounce. That's what Norman Mailer did. That's what James Baldwin did, and Joan Didion did, and that's what I do - that's what I mean to do. "

" Those of us who submitted or surrendered our ideas and dreams and identities to the 'leaders' must take back our rights, our identities, our responsibilities. "

" Elimination of illiteracy is as serious an issue to our history as the abolition of slavery. "

" In the flush of love's light, we dare be brave. And suddenly we see that love costs all we are, and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free. "

" I was a dancer for many years. I was a premier dancer with 'Porgy and Bess,' the opera. And I taught dance some, in different places. "

" 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. "

" At one time in my life, from the time I was seven until I was about 13, I didn't speak. I only spoke to my brother. The reason I didn't speak: I had been molested, and I told the name of the molester to my brother who told it to the family. "

" 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. "

" Don't get older just to get wiser. If you get older, you will be wiser, I believe that - if you dare. But get older because it's fun! "

" It is impossible to struggle for civil rights, equal rights for blacks, without including whites. Because equal rights, fair play, justice, are all like the air: we all have it, or none of us has it. That is the truth of it. "

" If I walked into the kitchen without washing my hands as a kid, I'd hear a loud 'A-hem!' from my mother or grandmother. Now I count on other people to do the same. "

" I refuse to allow any man-made differences to separate me from any other human beings. "

" I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. "

" One of the wonderful things about Oprah: She teaches you to keep on stepping. "

" If you will have a person enslaved, the first thing you must do is convince yourself that the person is subhuman. The second thing you have to do is convince your allies so you'll have some help, and the third and probably unkindest cut of all is to convince that person that he or she is subhuman and deserves it. "