Give, give, give. The more you give, the happier you are.

Sacrifice the self and you will gain it. Serve the self and you will lose it.

Showing up is at least 90% of it.

Yes. I'm not unhappy about becoming old. I'm not unhappy about what must be. It makes me cry only when I see my friends go before me and life is emptied. I don't believe in an afterlife, but I still fully expect to see my brother again. ... But, you know, there's something I'm finding out as I'm aging that I am in love with the world. And I look right now, as we speak together, out my window in my studio and I see my trees and my beautiful, beautiful maples that are hundreds of years old, they're beautiful. And you see I can see how beautiful they are. I can take time to see how beautiful they are. It is a blessing to get old. It is a blessing to find the time to do the things, to read the books, to listen to the music.

Always saying yes to people. For example, I’m doing this.

In 1993, making love on the beach of a deserted island in the Bahamas.

Appearing on US breakfast radio. I heard the DJ say that after the news we would hear from the author Lincoln Child. I had to choose between making a guy with a mixed-up PR release look like an idiot or pretending to be Lincoln. I pretended.

More than I can, sadly. I led the softest of lives in the softest of times, and my daughter will face sterner challenges.

I’m from Birmingham. I’m not afraid of things. Things are afraid of me.

The exact median middle-aged black woman in the US. If hard work guaranteed success, she’d be the most successful person on the planet. But she isn’t, yet she keeps on going.