Do not wait; the time will never be just right. Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.

He picked up one of Lorna's roses and set it in my lap. Here. I picked it up and smelled it. He poked me in the shoulder. See what I mean? Thorns don't stop you from sniffing. Or putting them in a vase on the kitchen table. You work around them.... Cause the rose is worth it... Think what you'd miss.

And God has this funny way of stretching and changing and pushing us toward things we don't want to face. I don't think the past is something we deal with as much as it deals with us.

The presence of evil was something to be first recognized, then dealt with, survived, outwitted, triumphed over.

Daily life took as much as she had. The future was sunset; the past something to leave behind. And if it didn't stay behind, well, you might have to stomp it out.

Tough shit, buddy. Your tough shit...

If a Negro got legs he ought to use them. Sit down too long, somebody will figure out a way to tie them up.

The one set of plans she had made—getting away from Sweet Home—went awry so completely she never dared life by making more.

When he was drifting, thinking only about the next meal and night's sleep, when everything was packed tight in his chest, he had no sense of failure, of things not working out. Anything that worked at all worked out.

God's power can bring down any giant, but we have to be willing to get in the game.

If you could be a fly on the wall of my office the numerous times I counsel married couples, you would hear the same word I hear over and over and over again: Trapped. I can't tell you how many times I've been asked to help married couples not feel so trapped. One husband came to me after only six months of marriage, already saying he felt trapped and wanted out.

I create my own path. It was straight and narrow. I looked at it this way: you were either in my way, or out of it.