After a while, you have to be at peace with the fact that you simple are
I think children have talent and insight, but it gets beaten out of them.
There are times in life when, instead of complaining, you do something about your complaints.
If our children are unable to voice what they mean, no one will know how they feel. If they can’t imagine a different world, they are stumbling through a darkness made all the more sinister by its lack of reference points. For a young person growing up in America’s alienated neighborhoods, there can be no greater empowerment than to dare to speak from the heart — and then to discover that one is not alone in ones feelings.
Courage has nothing to do with our determination to be great. It has to do with what we decide in that moment when we are called upon to be more.
All of us have moments in our childhood where we come alive for the first time. And we go back to those moments and think, This is when I became myself.
A good poem is like a bouillon cube. It's concentrated and it nourishes you when you need it.
People come up to us and ask how we knew so much about their own family. . . I'm talking about people from faraway places, too. I get people from Turkey and Chile coming up to me and saying I wrote about their family.
I would not live alway; I ask not to stay Where storm after storm rises dark o'er the way.
I'm not here to be on display. And my body is not for public consumption. I will not be reduced to an object, or a pair of legs to sell shoes. I'm a soul, a mind, a servant of God. My worth is defined by the beauty of my soul, my heart, my moral character. So I won't worship your beauty standards, and I don't submit to your fashion sense. My submission is to something higher.
I hated school so intensely. It interfered with my freedom. I avoided the discipline by an elaborate technique of being absent-minded during classes.