Quotes on I Can

All I can do is write my stories for mankind, and rest easy.

I tore up and ate my own passport in an airport hotel once. I'm bloated with language I can’t afford to forget.

I don't see myself as disabled. There's nothing I can't do that able-bodied athletes can do.

I'd like to think that when I sing a song, I can let you know all about the heartbreak, struggle, lies and kicks in the ass I've gotten over the years for being black and everything else, without actually saying a word about it.

As long as the Earth can make a spring every year, I can.

If you dont like the way your life is going, redesign it. Redeem the years you lost. Restore your vision, revive your passion for living, and reclaim what was dormant inside of you. I cannot give you the dream but I can give you the tools to reach the dreams you have inside.

I can’t worry too much about the everyday things. Otherwise I’d lose touch with my own world, that helps me as an artist, but it’s frustrating for the people around me. I’m vaguely functional, but there’s always something slightly off.

One thing I can say about the Motown acts is that we were a family. That's not a myth

Two questions I can't really answer about fiction are 1) where it comes from, and 2) why we need it. But that we do create it and also crave it is beyond dispute.

This I can declare: things that are in heaven are more real than things that are in the world.

I believe the single most significant decision I can make on a day-to-day basis is my choice of attitude. It is more important than my past, my education, my bankroll, my successes or failures, fame or pain, what other people think of me or say about me, my circumstances, or my position.

I'm a failure as a woman. My men expect so much of me, because of the image they've made of me and that I've made of myself, as a sex symbol. Men expect so much, and I can't live up to it.

I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.

Oh, I can spot a phoney a mile away.

I still close my eyes and go home - I can always draw from that.

Maybe that’s why I’ve made it as far as I have – 2,521 miles. If I ran to a doctor every time I got a little cyst or abrasion I’d still be in Nova Scotia. Or else I’d never have started. I’ve seen people in so much pain. The little bit of pain I’m going through is nothing. They can’t shut it off, and I can’t shut down every time I feel a little sore.

Oh Lord, I thank Thee that I can bring these people Thy Word. But Lord, there are other villages back in the jungle where no white man has gone. They need Jesus, too. Help me reach them!

Nobody has a right to whip me but my own master, and nobody shall do so if I can prevent it

I can't work without a model. I won't say I turn my back on nature ruthlessly in order to turn a study into a picture, arranging the colors, enlarging and simplifying; but in the matter of form I am too afraid of departing from the possible and the true.

People will never understand the patience a photographer requires to make a great photograph, all they see is the end result. I can stand in front of a leaf with a dew drop, or a rain drop, and stay there for ages just waiting for the right moment. Sure, people think I'm crazy, but who cares? I see more than they do!

But when I look back I can't call myself unlucky. My 23rd birthday was December 14. In these years I have had more than most people get in a lifetime.