'Thank you' is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding.

I made my first white women friends in college; they loved me and were loyal to our friendship, but I understood, as they did, that they were white women and that whiteness mattered.

Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it.

The experience of God, or in any case the possibility of experiencing God, is innate.

This is a wonderful planet, and it is being completely destroyed by people who have too much money and power and no empathy.

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.

It is justice and respect that I want the world to dust off and put - without delay, and with tenderness - back on the head of the Palestinian child. It will be imperfect justice and respect because the injustice and disrespect have been so severe. But I believe we are right to try.

Women have to summon up courage to fulfill dormant dreams.

Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it.

Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be.

It's so clear that you have to cherish everyone. I think that's what I get from these older black women, that every soul is to be cherished, that every flower Is to bloom.

Fear is real, but so is love.

You know how big love is? Love is big. love can hold anger; love can even hold hatred.

For in the end, freedom is a personal and lonely battle; and one faces down fears of today so that those of tomorrow might be engaged.

In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they're still beautiful.

Yes, Mother. I can see you are flawed. You have not hidden it. That is your greatest gift to me.

Don't wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any happiness you get you've got to make yourself.

In search of my mother's garden, I found my own.

No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.

Howard Zinn was magical as a teacher. Witty, irreverent, and wise, he loved what he was teaching and clearly wanted his students to love it, also.

Clearly older women and especially older women who have led an active life or elder women who successfully maneuver through their own family life have so much to teach us about sharing, patience, and wisdom.

In South Korea, they believe that when you turn 60, you've become a baby again and the rest of your life should be totally about joy and happiness, and people should leave you alone, and I just think that that's the height of intelligence.

Life is abundant, and life is beautiful. And it's a good place that we're all in, you know, on this earth, if we take care of it.

I understood at a very early age that in nature, I felt everything I should feel in church but never did. Walking in the woods, I felt in touch with the universe and with the spirit of the universe.

I don't call myself a Buddhist. I'm a free spirit. I believe I'm here on earth to admire and enjoy it; that's my religion.

Creation is a sustained period of bliss, even though the subject can still be very sad. Because there's the triumph of coming through and understanding that you have, and that you did it the way only you could do it. You didn't do it the way somebody told you to do it.