“But I really believe, and Daddy really believes, that there are more good people on this earth than bad people, and the good people watch out for each other and take care of each other.”
“The best way to measure how much you’ve grown isn’t by inches or the number of laps you can now run around the track, or even your grade point average — though those things are important, to be sure. It’s what you’ve done with your time, how you’ve chosen to spend your days, and whom you’ve touched this year. That, to me, is the greatest measure of success.”
“I wish every day could be Halloween. We could all wear masks all the time. Then we could walk around and get to know each other before we got to see what we looked like under the masks.”
“Kinder than is necessary. Because it’s not enough to be kind. One should be kinder than needed. Why I love that line, that concept, is that it reminds me that we carry with us, as human beings, not just the capacity to be kind, but the very choice of kindness.”
“A fresh start gives us the chance to reflect on the past, weigh the things we’ve done, and apply what we’ve learned from those things to the future. If we don’t examine the past, we don’t learn from it.”
“Some things you just can’t explain. You don’t even try. You don’t know where to start. All your sentences would jumble up like a giant knot if you opened your mouth. Any words you used would come out wrong.”
“It’s not all random, if it really was all random, the universe would abandon us completely. And the universe doesn’t. It takes care of its most fragile creations in ways we can’t see...Maybe it is a lottery, but the universe makes it all even out in the end. The universe takes care of all its birds.”
“The things we do outlast our mortality. The things we do are like monuments that people build to honor heroes after they’ve died. They’re like the pyramids that the Egyptians built to honor the pharaohs. Only instead of being made of stone, they’re made out of the memories people have of you.”
“Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as you ever can.”
Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can’t touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can’t see.
I say,
It’s in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
“If someone were to tell a friend, ‘I want to see you tonight’, you would wonder what was meant by ‘you’. You would keep asking yourself, ‘Does “you” in this case mean “you” or “U”?’
If ‘you’ means ‘U’ and ‘U’ is me, then that lady wants to see me tonight. And then you would wonder why, I tell you, Professor Sherman, ‘U’ is a bad name.”
“She often remembered that building and wondered who owned it. Someone very kind she was sure for in front of every one of the many seats there had been a little carpet-eared puppy-sized dog-bed.”