I was a kind of hyper-intense person in my twenties and very impatient.

Don’t make the same decision twice. Spend time and thought to make a solid decision the first time so that you don’t revisit the issue unnecessarily

Reward worthy failure–experimentation

As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.

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

Beauty is strangely various. There is the beauty of light and joy and strength exulting; but there is also the beauty of shade, of sorrow and sadness, and of humility oppressed.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

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

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 just think cities are unnatural, basically. I know there are people who live happily in them, and I have cities that I love, too. But it's a disaster that we have moved so far from nature.

I try to teach my heart not to want things it can't have.

I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart.

I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart.

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

Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

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

The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.

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

I love the natural world - it comes from my culture, which grew out of a people enslaved.

I love us so incredibly, insanely deeply; it's almost unbearable to see what we do to ourselves.

Kindness is like snow – It beautifies everything it covers.

Fear is real, but so is love.

I think 'The Color Purple' is so bursting with love, the need for connection, the showing of the need for connection around the globe.

You bring children into the world. You love them with heart and soul.

Nobody is superior, nobody is inferior, but nobody is equal either. People are simply unique, incomparable. You are you. I am I.

I believe you mother everybody, not in a cloying, hovering way, but taking care of what is around you.

I don’t like standard beauty – there is no beauty without strangeness.

You have to give others the opportunity to love who you love. If they don't accept it, it's their loss.

To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.

What's really hard is that you could care a lot for someone and not want to live with him anymore.

Beauty is the promise of happiness.

Once you feel loved by the universe, you're already accepted, and you're not really concerned about offending people.

Beauty is how you feel inside, and it reflects in your eyes. It is not something physical.

The fact is that when you do something from your heart, you leave a heart print.

I have fallen in love with the imagination. And if you fall in love with the imagination, you understand that it is a free spirit. It will go anywhere, and it can do anything.

Wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is the promise of the future.

My life is not to be somebody else's impact - you know what I mean?

Well, I think indigenous peoples have ways of living on the Earth that they've had forever. And they've been overrun by organized religion, which has had a lot of money and power.

People tend to think that life really does progress for everyone eventually, that people progress, but actually only some people progress. The rest of the people don't.

I see children, all children, as humanity's most precious resource, because it will be to them that the care of the planet will always be left.

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

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.

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

There is no torture that a woman would not endure to enhance her beauty.

It no longer bothers me that I may be constantly searching for father figures; by this time, I have found several and dearly enjoyed knowing them all.

Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.

Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them. 

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

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.