“The family is like a diamond, with a rock solidity and divine splendor, held by love.”
“My family comes first, then others.”
“You can’t choose your parentage. But you can choose your legacy.”
“But in life, no one is spared, no one is let off the hook. Those buried sensations had to come out, be felt, addressed, and lived through. I wish I could say I let it all out that night. All of the tears, all of the screams, all of the bullshit. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. It would take something much stronger to bring all that out of me. Still. By the time the sun rose the next morning, one thing had changed: I was no longer full of shit... I drove west; needing to escape the gravitational pull of both of my families and anyone who knew them. I needed to wallow in uncertainty, without the balancing effects of religion or school, or friends, or family to cling to. If I was ever going to figure out who I was, I needed to be a stranger again.”
“It s not the sex that gives you pleasure, it s the lover. For the remainder of my life, I plan to give this woman as much as she can handle, and then some. Often. Repeatedly.”
“As we age, we become our parents; live long enough and we see faces repeat in time.”
“Is it better to have your life ended by someone who hates you or someone who loves you?”
“There are moments in your life, moments when chances have to be taken. It s scary because there is always the possibility of failure. I know that. I KNOW that. Because once upon a time, I took a chance on a man that I had failed before. I was SCARED. I was TERRIFIED. I thought I might lose everything. But I wasn t living, then. The life I had before wasn t LIVING. It was getting by. And I will never regret the chances I took. Because it brought me to them. To all of them. I made my choice. And you re making yours. Don t you wish things could be different?”
“Your silence furnishes a dark house. But even at the risk of burning, the moth always seeks the light.”
“What scared Stanley the most about dying wasn t his actual death. He figured he could handle the pain. It wouldn t be much worse than what he felt now. In fact, maybe at the moment of his death he would be too weak to feel pain. Death would be a relief. What worried him the most was the thought of his parents not knowing what happened to him, not knowing whether he was dead or alive. He hated to imagine what it would be like for his mother and father, day after day, month after month, not knowing, living on false hope. For him, at least, it would be over. For his parents, the pain would never end.”
“The person you love has all kinds of seeds in her: joy, suffering, and anger. If you water her anger, then in just five minutes you can bring the anger out in her. If you know how to water the seeds of her compassion, joy, and understanding, then these seeds will blossom. If you recognize the good seeds in her, you are watering her self-confidence and she will become the source of her own happiness as well as yours.”
“We laughed about all the kids who believed in the Santa Claus myth and got nothing for Christmas but a bunch of cheap plastic toys. Years from now, when all the junk they got is broken and long forgotten , Dad said, you ll still have your stars.”
“When Ulysses saw his brother, a wonderful thing happened to his face. All the terror left his eyes, because now he was home”
“We are aware that blaming and arguing can never help us and only create a wider gap between us; that only understanding, trust, and love can help us change and grow”
“Come to yo’ Grandma, honey. Set in her lap lak yo’ use tuh. Yo’ Nanny wouldn’t harm a hair uh yo’ head. She don’t want nobody else to do it neither if she kin help it. Honey, de white man is de ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tuh find out. Maybe it’s some place way off in de ocean where de black man is in power, but we don’t know nothin’ but what we see. So de white man throw down de load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he don’t tote it. He hand it to his womenfolks. De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see. Ah been prayin’ fuh it tuh be different wid you. Lawd, Lawd, Lawd!”
“When restless sexual desire arises, we pay attention to it with enough understanding and enough love that it dissipates and does not grow.”
“There is no antidote against the opium of time, which temporally considereth all things: our fathers find their graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors. Gravestones tell truth scarce forty years. Generations pass while some trees stand, and old families last not three oaks.”