Black Pearls Living

It is impossible to raise and educate a race in the mass. All revolutions and improvements must start with individuals.

—John W. E. Bowen

Remember, I wasn’t supposed to last. I wasn’t supposed to be here ten years later, because I was just supposed to be a flash in the pan.

—Whoopi Goldberg

Becoming a world-class figure skater meant long hours of practice while sometimes tolerating painful injuries. It meant being totally exhausted sometimes, and not being able to do all the things I wanted to do when I wanted to do them.

—Debi Thomas

My grandmother and her third daughter, my mother, put on maids’ uniforms and cooked and sewed and served a family that employed my grandmother until she was nearly 80. I owe these women everything. They taught me hope and kindness and how to say thank you.

—Patricia Raybon

Courage may be the most important of all virtues, because without it one cannot practice any other virtue with consistency.

—Maya Angelou

My parents had the good sense to channel my energy and put me in dancing school, because I was driving them crazy.

—Judith Jamison

If farmers do not cultivate their fields, the people in the town will die of hunger.

—Guinean Proverb

One of the problems with this country is that we’re wasting the elderly. But nature wastes nothing, so why isn’t their knowledge recycled into the children? To me, there’s nothing more wonderful than an old person who loves children and wants to teach them.

—Eartha Kitt

I rewrite all the way to the printer. I’m never satisfied.

—Toni Morrison

Whenever I find myself beginning to be intolerant or insensitive with my daughters, I think back to a similar incident I put my mother through and I smile and understand their need to be themselves.

—Annette Jones White