my mother chose to teach me that sometimes gratification has to be delayed. - Sidney Poitier

Though I wasn’t always happy when girlfriends’ parents disapproved of my background or my choice of career, I tried not to take it personally. Instead, I focused all the more on improving my standing with the work that I’d chosen. In much later years, from time to time I would run into an old flame or two, or their parents, like an ex-girlfriend’s mom who regretted that her daughter hadn’t married me.

fear is a visceral response to imminent jeopardy, real or perceived, threatening to come crashing down on you with devastating results.

I've learned that I must find positive outlets for anger or it will destroy me. There is a certain anger: it reaches such intensity that to express it fully would require homicidal rage — self destructive, destroy the world rage — and its flame burns because the world is so unjust. I have to try to find a way to channel that anger to the positive, and the highest positive is forgiveness.