I found poetry at 12 and 13 and, lo and behold, learned that my attorney father had a background in poetry - as he wore dashikis and Afros in the '70s and named his kids Arabic names. He was a poet and a lot like The Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron and all of these folks. He definitely was an artist.

I was trying to pay the bills with poems, and it was easy to memorize my poems, because I'd be riding my bike in California trying to memorize them before going on stage at a poetry lounge.

That's the thing with me being a former athlete: in the way I attack characters and attack poetry is from the base of being an athlete.

I'm a black Catholic raised in Decatur, Georgia, which was very gang-infested. Then, I went to an all-white private high school and excelled in sports and wrote poetry, then played football at the University of Georgia, minoring in drama.

Poetry is almost like my foundation for everything. I almost feel I am a better actor and writer because of it.

The Son of God became man so that we might become God.

Whatever religion or wisdom, spirituality and values are important to me and to the business.

I realize that every time we discuss a job placement and look at a list of both male and female candidates, there's a question that comes up pretty much all the time for the woman: 'Will she know how to assert herself?' It's not meant to be malicious. It's more, 'Will she manage to take leadership of the team you want to entrust to her?'

Citizens and consumers are demanding that climate change and environmental issues be taken seriously.

Religion is a big problem in Israel and the Arab world, but again, the problem isn't religion but political leaders who want to use the religion.

Havana, for all its smells, sweat, crumbling walls, isolation, and difficult history, is the most romantic city in the world.

I have written a considerable amount - both fiction and nonfiction - about the Caribbean. My love for this part of the world is centered on a deep admiration for its people - a people who are both tough and romantic, dreamers and cynics, people who face a thousand defeats and are never defeated.

People in America think of it as a sad and downtrodden place, and I guess it could be, but it's not because that's not who Cubans are. In Cuba, you get a good story every day you go out walking. People are so funny.

I love seeing what people are eating. It's a great way of looking at what is similar and what is different about people. It's sociology and anthropology and history rolled into one.

Food is the best way to teach history and geography and most everything else.

Before refrigeration, most food was heavily salted. Many of these salted foods have persisted, such as sauerkraut, pickles, cured anchovies, cheese, salted butter, ham, corned beef, sausage, and bacon. We still eat these things because we like them. But they are no longer the mainstay of our diet.

The environmental movement does not always have to be about stopping things. It can be about fixing problems.

I translated an Emile Zola book, 'The Belly of Paris,' because I didn't find an existing translation that captured his sense of humor. Humor is the first victim of translation.

Well, the first time I ran into the term religion, people were asking whether you had any. You know, some people had religion and some people didn't have religion.

And I used to think that proof that I had religion was whether I knew how to sing all of the songs.

There is a great interest in comparative religion and a desire to understand faiths other than our own and even to experiment with exotic cults.

The future will be determined in part by happenings that it is impossible to foresee; it will also be influenced by trends that are now existent and observable.

As to judging our own time, and thereby gaining some basis for a judgment of future possibilities, we are doubtless not only too close to it to appraise it but too much formed by it and enclosed within it to do so.

Technology gives us the facilities that lessen the barriers of time and distance - the telegraph and cable, the telephone, radio, and the rest.

Industrialization based on machinery, already referred to as a characteristic of our age, is but one aspect of the revolution that is being wrought by technology.

Another cause of change, one less noticeable but fundamental, is the modern growth of population closely connected with scientific and medical discoveries. It is interesting that the United Nations has set up a special Commission to study this question.

Those who are rooted in the depths that are eternal and unchangeable and who rely on unshakeable principles, face change full of courage, courage based on faith.

I have always respected everyone's religion. As I say, there is only one God and a lot of confused people.

When a dog barks at the moon, then it is religion; but when he barks at strangers, it is patriotism!

Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it.

In Goddess religion death is not feared, but is understood to be a part of life, followed by birth and renewal.

Our great symbol for the Goddess is the moon, whose three aspects reflect the three stages in women's lives and whose cycles of waxing and waning coincide with women's menstrual cycles.

The simplest and most basic meaning of the symbol of the Goddess is the acknowledgment of the legitimacy of female power as a beneficent and independent power.

I first became interested in women and religion when I was one of the few women doing graduate work in Religious Studies at Yale University in the late 1960's.

Throughout the years, many Christian women have told me of their great respect for the bravery and courage evident in my work, perhaps even gesturing to their own Isis earrings or a Nile River Goddess pendants.

Daredevil's religion makes him unique. He's a vigilante, but he's also a lawyer - and all the while, he believes only God is capable of bringing people to justice.

Daredevil was known as 'The Man Without Fear,' and I just thought, 'Well, I don't think that's very interesting.' I don't think it's very interesting to watch someone who's incapable of feeling fear. It also removes from the palate my favorite character attribute, which is courage. If you're not afraid, you can't exercise courage.

As the sun outshines the brightest star in the heavens, dispels every vestige of darkness and gives life and light to all beings, so, in a not too distant future, will the true religion of Christ supersede and obliterate all other religions, to the eternal benefit of mankind.

While the Bible teaches that immortality of the soul is conditional upon well-doing, it makes no distinction in respect of the spirit.

Each visible planet is the embodiment of a great and exalted spiritual intelligence Who is the minister of God in that department of His Kingdom, endeavoring to carry out His Will, the latter having in view the ultimate highest good, regardless of temporary ill.

To the medical man, astrology is invaluable in diagnosing diseases and prescribing a remedy, for it reveals the hidden cause of all ailments.

It is best to be born in April or August when the life-giving Sun is in its exaltation sign Aries or Leo, its home, for then we enter the sea of life on the crest-wave and are backed in the battle of existence by an abundant fund of vim and energy.

The notion that religion can actually be something... attached to progressivism seems so bizarre. But all you have to say is that Abolition wouldn't have happened without it. The way in which African Americans managed to achieve a degree of self-determination was through the church.

The Jews invented a portable religion in the shape of the Bible, the Torah, and eventually the Talmud, and with other portable forms of writing. So it's now possible to carry the religion, that is embedded in that writing, away from the ruins of political and military power.

The older I get, the more I want to do. It beats death, decay or golf in unfortunate trousers. Peace and quiet depress me.

The Elephantine papyri - written as some of the books of the Bible are being written - is true social and legal documentation, and to historians overwhelmingly powerful and moving, even when ostensibly about trivial things.

Sculptures created from found materials like ice and thorns, driftwood, and even bleached kangaroo bones all presuppose that artistic design will yield to the cycles of time and climate, whether over an hour or a decade.

No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.

The Bible must be considered as the great source of all the truth by which men are to be guided in government as well as in all social transactions.

I just have a sense that, you know, I'm curious about what is religion about, you know? Why do some of us still engage it? It's not because it's a set of old beliefs or old ideas. Or even, particularly, the view that this is the only true religion. Many of us no longer accept those views.