“Feel not obliged to make good use of every ripe fruit on the vine.”

“Gently guide the tender vine else it become wild, tangled and impossible.”

“A simple question. A simple answer. What opportunities lie within our reach that hold the power to make a difference in the quality of the lives of others simply by sharing the bounties and blessings that grace our lives?”

“Cultivate plants which attract lovely company.”

“What wild undisturbed corners do you leave within you or within your partner, your children, your parents, your closest friends? What is left respectfully and quietly for passive cultivation, for privacy, for the imagination, for discovery, for serendipity, for faith, for secrecy, for grace, for reverence, for the untapped, for the future, for the unknowable and the unknown?”

“There is no trickier subject for a writer from the South than that of affection between a black person and a white one in the unequal world of segregation. For the dishonesty upon which a society is founded makes every emotion suspect, makes it impossible to know whether what flowed between two people was honest feeling or pity or pragmatism.(Howell Raines's Pulitzer Prize winning article "Grady's Gift")-Sockett admired this quote and used it in her summary...”

“I guess we all get a little snippy when we're not feeling good.”