The mistake 99 percent of humanity made, as far as Fats could see, was being ashamed of what they were; lying about it, trying to be somebody else.

J.K. Rowling, The Casual Vacancy

Everybody remembers the first time they were taught that part of the human race was Other. . . . It’s as though I told you that your left hand is not part of your body.

Toni Morrison

Success is the American Dream we can keep dreaming because most people in most places . . . live wide awake in the terrible reality of poverty.

Ursula K. Le Guin

One of the first things we must get rid of is the idea that democracy is tantamount to capitalism.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Religion is not about accepting twenty impossible propositions before breakfast, but about doing things that change you. It is a moral aesthetic, an ethical alchemy. If you behave in a certain way, you will be transformed.

Karen Armstrong

I learned a history not then written in books but one passed from generation to generation on the steps of moonlit porches and beside dying fires in one-room houses, a history of great-grandparents and of slavery and of the days following slavery; of those who lived still not free, yet who would not let their spirits be enslaved.

Mildred D. Taylor

You have everything in you that Buddha has, that Christ has, you’ve got it all. But only when you start to acknowledge it is it going to get interesting. Your problem is you’re afraid to acknowledge your own beauty. You’re too busy holding on to your own unworthiness. You’d rather be a schnook sitting before some great man. That fits in more with who you think you are. Well, enough already. I sit before you and I look and I see your beauty, even if you don’t.

Ram Dass, Grist for the Mill

The importance and unimportance of the self cannot be exaggerated.

R.H. Blyth

We have to stumble through so much dirt and humbug before we reach home. And we have no one to guide us. Our only guide is our homesickness.

Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf

She loved the serene brutality of the ocean, loved the electric power she felt with each breath of wet, briny air.

Holly Black, Tithe