I am no longer sure of anything. If I satiate my desires, I sin but I deliver myself from them; if I refuse to satisfy them, they infect the whole soul.
Them
I always distrust people who know so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows.
My mother never made me do anything for my brothers, like serve them. I think that’s an important lesson, especially for the Latino culture, because the women are expected to be the ones that serve and cook and whatever. Not in our family. Everybody was equal.
I don’t concentrate on any one period of history; I like to locate my stories in wildly different eras and places. I seem to be drawn to large, sprawling, uncomfortable swaths of American history, finding embedded within them a tight narrative that involves strife, heroism, and survival under difficult circumstances.
I’m convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they’re stones that don’t matter. As long as you’re breathing, it’s never too late to do some good.
You have great athletic directors, you let them run it; you keep yourself informed, but I’m not the athletic director. I’m the president of the university.
The reasons kids get into trouble in one way or another is because – Who ever told them they were special?
I cannot explain it; but when difficulties arise, I am not perplexed or doubtful. I know how to meet them.
When you argue with your inferiors, you convince them of only one thing: they are as clever as you.
I knew about holiness, never having missed a Sunday-school class since I started at four years. But if Jews were also religious, how could our neighbor with the grease-grimy shirt use the word ‘damn’ about them?