Quotes about Transformation

Strange how a single conversation can change you. Or maybe it only seems that way in retrospect.

If people can learn to hate they can learn to love.

Still, in the aggregate, at least, I wanted somehow to save them—send them to school, give them a trade, drain them of the hate that had been filling their heads.

History travels not only forwards; history can travel backwards, history can travel sideways.

Ultimately it was rap that got my head in the right place, two songs especially: Jay-Z's "My 1st Song" and Eminem's "Lose Yourself.

New life starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark.

I had done everything I knew how to do to draw as near to the heart of God as I could, only to find myself out of gas on a lonely road, filled with bitterness & self-pity. To suppose that I had ended up in such a place by the grace of God required a significant leap of faith. If I could open my hands, then all that fell from them might flower on the way down. If I could let myself fall, then I too might land in a fertile place.

Time cures you first, and then it kills you.

Move on. Walk forward into the light.

You can't just sashay into the jungle aiming to change it all over to the Christian style, without expecting the jungle to change you right back.

People change, she said. Not everything stays with you all your life.

Emelina and I took each other in. All morning I'd felt the strange disjuncture that comes from reconnecting with your past. There's such a gulf between yourself and who you were then, but people speak to that other person and it answers; it's like having a stranger as a house guest in your skin.