“..we all do it. We talk about people we don't like until they become famous. Then we love 'em.”

“Don't give people god's power. Yeah, they have opinions and stuff, but they ain't got no power to change your world unless you give it to 'em. Keep the power you got. You'll need it. I promise.”

“Big don't mean ugly, and thin sho don't mean pretty. If a person wants to be pretty, they gotta walk pretty, talk pretty and act pretty. Can't nobody take pretty from you.”

“What he liked about the Jordan was hat no one could hinder its flow. It has a mind all its own. Other's opinions of its size or depth didn't matter. Only God possessed the power to subvert its course. Whether viewers loved it or not was inconsequential. It was a river, and it was created to flow, and that was exactly what it did. And that's all it did. That was its purpose, and no one could alter that identity regardless of what they thought.”

“Denial makes people repeat what they aren’t willing to acknowledge.”

“But remember this: you're strong because of your people - not in spite of them.”

“The things we do when we expect our lives to continue are naturally and properly different than the things we might do if we expected them to end abruptly. We go easy on the lard and tobacco, smile dutifully at yet another of our supervisor's witless jokes, read books like this one when we could be wearing paper hats and eating pistachio macaroons in the bathtub, and we do each of these things in the charitable service of the people we will soon become.”