I didn't know then what I wanted, but the ache for it was palpable.

The body knows things a long time before the mind catches up to them. I was wondering what my body knew that I didn't.

Nothing is fair in this world. You might as well get that straight right now

Actually, you can be bad at something...but if you love doing it, that will be enough. - August Boatwright

History is not just facts and events. History is also a pain in the heart and we repeat history until we are able to make another’s pain in the heart our own.

You have to know when to prod and when to be quiet, when to let things take their course.

It was the first time I'd ever said the words to another person, and the sound of them broke open my heart.

I know you've run away - everybody gets the urge to do that some time - but sooner or later you'll want to go home.

I wanted to know what happened when two people felt it. Would it divide the hurt in two, make it lighter to bear, the way feeling someone's joy seemed to double it?

It's something everybody wants-for someone to see the hurt done to them and set it down like it matters.

You can tell which girls lack mothers by the look of their hair...

You have to find a mother inside yourself. We all do. Even if we already have a mother, we still have to find this part of ourselves inside

If you must err, do so on the side of audacity.

To remain silent in the face of evil is itself a form of evil.

Honeybees depend not only on physical contact with the colony, but also require it's social companionship and support. Isolate a honeybee from her sisters and she will soon die.

We can't think of changing our skin color. Change the world - that's how we gotta think.

People in general would rather die than forgive. It's that hard. If God said in plain language. "I'm giving you a choice, forgive or die," a lot of people would go ahead and order their coffin.

Women made the best beekeepers 'cause they have a special ability built into them to love creatures that sting.

It was the oldest sound there was. Souls flying away.

I watched him, filled with tenderness and ache, wondering what it was that connected us. Was it the wounded places down inside people that sought each other out, that bred a kind of love between them?

My body might be a slave, but not my mind. For you, it's the other way round.

If you aren't giving people something to talk about, you've become too dull.

What's wrong with living in a dream world? You have to wake up.

There's no pain on earth that doesn't crave a benevolent witness.

My mother's life was way too heavy for me.

I promise you, no one judges me more harshly than I do myself; I caused a brilliant wreckage. Some say I fell from grace; they’re being kind. I didn’t fall – I dove.

And I was struck all at once how life was out there going through its regular courses, and I was suspended, waiting, caught in a terrible crevice between living my life and not living it.

You got to figure out which end of the needle you’re gon be, the one that’s fastened to the thread or the end that pierces the cloth.

I believe in the goodness of imagination.

People who think dying is the is the worst thing don't know a thing about life.

Look, I know you meant well creating the world and all, but how could you let it get away from you like this? How come you couldn't stick with your original idea of paradise? People's lives were a mess.

Have you ever written a letter you knew you could never mail but you needed to write it anyway?

Loss takes up inside of everything sooner or later and eats right through it.

Sometimes I didn't even feel like getting out of bed. I took to wearing my days-of-the-week panties out of order. It could be Monday and I'd have on underwear saying Thursday. I just didn't care.

People can start out one way, and by the time life gets through with them they end up completely different.

Regrets don't help anything.

I'm tired of carrying around the weight of the world. I'm just going to lay it down now. It's my time to die, and it's your time to live. Don't mess it up.

This is what I know about myself. She was all I wanted. And I took her away.

Yes, here I am returning, the woman who bore herself to the bottom and back. Who wanted to swim like dolphins, leaping waves and diving. Who wanted only to belong to herself.

You can't stop your heart from loving, really -- it's like standing out there in the ocean yelling at the waves to stop.

So few people know what they're capable of.

Did you know there are thirty-two names for love in one of the Eskimo languages?" August said. "And we just have this one. We are so limited, you have to use the same word.

The sorry truth is you can walk your feet to blisters, walk till kingdom-com, and you never will outpace your grief.

We walked along the river with the words streaming behind us like ribbons in the night.

It was the in-between time, before day leaves and night comes, a time I’ve never been partial to because of the sadness that lingers in the space between going and coming.

When mauma saw my raw eyes, she said, “Ain’t nobody can write down in a book what you worth.

Gazing into the mirror, I saw myself as I was-a black silhouette in the room, a woman whose darkness had completely leaked through.

I wished she'd been smart enough, or loving enough, to realize everybody has burdens that crush them, only they don't give up their children.

The whole problem with people is they don't know what matters and what doesn't.

You know, some things don't matter that much...Like the color of a house. How big is that in the overall scheme of life? But lifting a person's heart - now, that matters.