Quotes on Life

Why worry? If you've done the very best you can, worrying won't make it any better

Vices are their own punishment

may I be I is the only prayer--not may I be great or good or beautiful or wise or strong.

The sad thing about destroying the environment is that we're going to take the rest of life with us. The bluebirds will be gone, and the elephants will be gone, and the tigers will be gone, and the pandas will be gone.

Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.

Boxing has been the most difficult thing I've ever done. The biggest challenge in my life. I was a boxer. That was hard. Everything else is pretty easy.

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

Form is, in a way, death. A novelist's obligation is to break free from the form, even though he knows that this will also be seen as artificial and distanced from life.

Let your mind see every detail of your own special version of the very best that life can be. If you could make the world exactly to your liking, consider very specifically just how that world would be. If you could spend your time doing precisely what you wish, how would the moments of your life be lived?

I grew up when one of America's greatest black playwrights, August Wilson, was writing about life in Pittsburgh, but I never saw myself in any of his straight-male plays. And then I see 'Angels,' which was so honest and painful, and it had this black drag queen in it, Belize, with a big heart. I finally had a character to relate to.

One side of me is very busy paying attention to the details of life, the humanity of people, catching the street voices, the middle-class, upper-middle-class secret lives of Turks. The other side is interested in history and class and gender, trying to get all of society in a very realistic way.

How nice -- to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.

All my life I believed I became an athlete through my own determination, but it's impossible to think that being descended from slaves hasn't left an imprint through the generations. Difficult as it was to hear, slavery has benefited descendants like me - I believe there is a superior athletic gene in us.

Yoga is not a practice - the word 'yoga' means union. It does not mean standing on your head, twisting your body, or holding your breath. Yoga means to know the union of life. When you experience everything as a part of yourself, you are in yoga.

Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.

Time makes more converts than reason.

To reach a port we must sail, sometimes with the wind, and sometimes against it. But we must not drift or lie at anchor.

We must, therefore, be here as strangers and pilgrims, that we may plainly declare that we seek a city above.

My life had been very work-orientated, and all in close-up. Once I had the family, it went into sudden widescreen.

Everything you want is on the other side of fear.

Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.