“Defiance means you got somebody with power over you.”

“you can't know the meaning of the lesson until class is over!”

“Sometimes the contradictions in their lives are so intense they seem manufactured for teaching life lessons, but it's hard to keep up with what you're supposed to be learning in that terrible moment between defiance and despair when all your energy is going into figuring out why it took so long to name the thing that's driving you crazy. At those moments, the best I can do is keep quiet and say a little prayer, which is what I did.”

“Because sometimes love just needs a witness... Somebody to testify. Sometimes love just needed somebody to step forward and say, Here I am, Spirit. Send me.”

“You can't save a person who doesn't want to be saved. It was like Mr. Eddie always told the new gardeners: Everybody's got to kill their own snakes.”

“Sometimes you meet yourself on the road before you have a chance to learn the appropriate greeting. Faced with your own possibilities, the hard part is knowing a speech is not required. All you have to say is yes.”

“Sometimes you have to show them what they want to see in order to get them to show you who they really are.”