You cannot control the circumstances, but you can always control what you think of them.

If you marinate your mind in your problems, they will eventually corrode and corrupt your thoughts. But thoughts of God will preserve and refresh your attitudes.

We would be wrong to think this change happens overnight. But we would be equally wrong to assume change never happens at all.

You can be the air traffic controller of your mental airport. You occupy the control tower and can direct the mental traffic of your world.

GOD LOVES YOU JUST THE WAY YOU ARE, BUT HE REFUSES TO LEAVE YOU THAT WAY.

You cannot be anything you want to be. But you can be everything God wants you to be.

Make every effort to change things you do not like. If you cannot make a change, change the way you have been thinking. You might find a new solution.

You are the sum total of everything you've ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot - it's all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive.

Graduation, the hush-hush magic time of frills and gifts and congratulations and diplomas, was finished for me before my name was called. The accomplishment was nothing. The meticulous maps, drawn in three colors of ink, learning and spelling decasyllabic words, memorizing the whole of The Rape of Lucrece - it was for nothing. Donleavy had exposed us. We were maids and farmers, handymen and washerwomen, and anything higher that we aspired to was farcical and presumptuous.

In order to avoid this bitter end, we would all have to be born again, and born with the knowledge of alternatives. Even then?

Never let white folks know what you really think. If you're sad, laugh. If you're bleeding inside, dance.

Seek the fashion which truly fits and befits you. You will always be in fashion if you are true to yourself, and only if you are true to yourself.