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

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

“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.”

“Any time your life is at stake and you can't find even one woman to come forward and say, 'This is a good man,' your problem isn't what kind of woman THEY are. Your problem is what kind of men YOU are.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I know once you repent, Jesus himself isn't big on punishment, but according to all the Old Testament stories, I ever heard, his was not above it”