Even with all of the things that are so awful, if you walk into your yard and stay there looking at almost anything for five minutes, you will be stunned by how marvelous life is and how incredibly lucky we are to have it.

I'm still living at least five parallel lives, honestly! I wonder about it. I have no idea how that happens.

It’s never too late for a new beginning in your life.

On a spiritual level, it's as though with my sighted eye I see what's before me, and with my unsighted eye I see what's hidden. It's illuminated life more than darkened it.

For me, writing has always come out of living a fairly to-the-bone kind of life, just really being present to a lot of life. The writing has been really a byproduct of that.

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.

Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.

The best and most beautiful things in life cannot be seen, not touched, but are felt in the heart.

My work is about my life, and what I want to do with it.

I can be almost terminally grief-stricken because things are so dire, but at the same time, there's a real lightheartedness about just the recoverability of life, of how things change, how they're not the same, ever again.

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

It's very hard for our parents who see us enter a world that they can't imagine.

If you want to have a life that is worth living, a life that expresses your deepest feelings and emotions and cares and dreams, you have to fight for it.

Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book, If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.

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

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

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

Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.

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.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

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.

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.

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.

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.