Words to Ponder

Someone once asked how I choose my quotes every week. I do based on what I see, hear, read, or feel.

This week I picked authors I've come across through the Harlem Book Festival in honor of this weekend's festival. I watched some coverage on C-SPAN.

Sunday-
"She always had it. At 16 she was wearing fabulous dresses that she had made herself. She was stylish before she had any money to spend on clothes. One of her friends said to me, "Your mother thought tall."
-Susan Fales Hill, author of "Always Wear Joy" when talking about her mother Josephine Premice

Monday-
"... my father and I had a special ritual, as my mother often told many times:
In the evenings I’d wait for him at the front door. He'd come in, pick me up, throw me over his shoulder, get a plate of oatmeal cookies that my mother made from scratch, and we’d go into the den to watch the news and share the delicious cookies."
-Ilyasah Shabazz, author of "Growing Up X" when asked about what she remembers of her father as a "family man"

Tuesday:
"We all need to feel as though we belong. We all need somebody to hear us when we say, 'I'm out here by myself. I'm scared. What am I going to do?"
-Regina Louise, author of "Somebody's Someone"

Wednesday:
"Love is packaged in this country's media as a luxury, something only the rich have the time or resources to indulge in."
- Pamela Newkirk, author of "A Love No Less"

Thursday:
"At some point in each of our lives we realize that life is not necessarily going to be fair. That was the day for me that I knew I was going to have to pick up some skills to survive."
-E Lynn Harris, author of "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted"

Friday:
"The problem comes when the pain of our past controls the way we live our lives today and shatters our faith and hope for a positive future."
Bishop David G. Evans, author of "Healed Without Scars"

Saturday:
"Walking those three blocks, I knew all I needed to know about where I wanted to be as I watched property values the Volvos as opposed to burned-out, you know, Cadillacs."
-David Matthews, author of "Ace of Spades" on why he chose to pass as white when his mother was a Jewish Israeli woman and his father a fair-skinned African-American man