The one who obeys God's instruction for today will develop a keen awareness of His direction for tomorrow.

Never is a woman so fulfilled as when she chooses to underwhelm her schedule so she can let God overwhelm her soul.

To trust God is to trust His timing. To trust God is to trust His way. God loves me too much to answer my prayers at any other time than the right time and in any other way than the right way. In the quietness of all that doesn't feel right, this truth does.

I love, therefore I am vulnerable.

A straight line is not the shortest distance between two points.

When the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere. When the work takes over, then the artist listens.

To love is to be vulnerable; and it is only in vulnerability and risk—not safety and security—that we overcome darkness.

If we are to be aware of life while we are living it, we must have the courage to relinquish our hard-earned control of ourselves.

If we accept that we have at least an iota of free will, we cannot throw it back the moment things go wrong. Like a human parent, God will help us when we ask for help, but in a way that will make us more mature, more real, not in a way that will diminish us.

A winter ago I had an after-school seminar for high-school students and in one of the early sessions Una, a brilliant fifteen-year-old, a born writer who came to Harlem from Panama five years ago, and only then discovered the conflict between races, asked me, Mrs. Franklin, do you really and truly believe in God with no doubts at all? Oh, Una, I really and truly believe in God with all kinds of doubts. But I base my life on this belief.

We turn to stories and pictures and music because they show us who and what and why we are, and what our relationship is to life and death, what is essential, and what, despite the arbitrariness of falling beams, will not burn.

I simply take him into my heart, and then put him into God's hand.