"You dont know how hard it was for me to take you and leave them alive."

“You know, I did records by myself and I always will say the Isley Brothers, and featuring Ronald. I won't, you know, just, I won't try to deviate from the Isley Brothers, because that's what the family dream was all about.”

Source : "'Baby Makin' Music' from the Isley Brothers". "News & Notes" with Ed Gordon, www.npr.org. May 16, 2006.

“A scientist said, making a plea for exchange scholarships between nations, "The best way to send an idea is to wrap it up in a person." That was what happened at Christmas. The idea of divine love was wrapped up in a person.”

Source : "Whoops! It's Christmas". "The Abbott Christmas Book". Book edited by Herbert W. Luthin, 1960.

“It is easy to be lenient at other people's expense, and call it generosity of mind.”

“Ability without enthusiasm is like a rifle without a bullet.”

“The poor need the motivation, the incentives, the skills, the education so they can help themselves.”

“I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.”

“A lot of times, people say that people read to escape. But I think if you come from any community that is underrepresented, in any kind of media, whether that's around race, around class, or sexual orientation, religion, whatever it may be, sometimes you read to be affirmed. To have your humanity rendered complexly. And sometimes seeing yourself on the page is affirming. And we know that for some young people, that can also be life-saving.”

“The very might of the human intellect reveals its limits.”