If you haven't forgiven yourself something, how can you forgive others.

If you haven't forgiven yourself something, how can you forgive others.

I remember as a little girl going down to the beet fields in the Dakotas and in Nebraska and Wyoming as migrant workers when I was very, very small, like, I was, like, 5 years old, I believe. And I remember going out there, you know, traveling to these states and living in these little tarpaper shacks that they had in Wyoming.

I think organized labor is a necessary part of democracy. Organized labor is the only way to have fair distribution of wealth.

My dad was very intelligent, had a very strong personality. I was amazed with my father.

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.

My mother was a dominant force in our family. And I always saw her as the leader. And that was great for me as a young woman, because I never saw that women had to be dominated by men.

My mother was a very wonderful woman. When she and my dad divorced, she moved to California and worked two jobs in the cannery at night and as a waitress during the day. But she saved enough money to establish a restaurant.

Professional farmworkers who know how to do a number of different jobs, whether it be pruning or picking or crafting, they see themselves as professionals, and they take a lot of pride in that work. They don't see themselves as doing work that is demeaning.

When you have a conflict, that means that there are truths that have to be addressed on each side of the conflict. And when you have a conflict, then it's an educational process to try to resolve the conflict. And to resolve that, you have to get people on both sides of the conflict involved so that they can dialogue.

Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person a potential activist, every minute a chance to change the world.

Honor the hands that harvest your crops.

If people don't vote, everything stays the same. You can protest until the sky turns yellow or the moon turns blue, and it's not going to change anything if you don't vote.

Giving kids clothes and food is one thing but it's much more important to teach them that other people besides themselves are important, and that the best thing they can do with their lives is to use them in the service of other people.

I enjoy journalism; anybody does. You see the results immediately; you've got an immediate audience instead of having to wait for your audience as you do if you're writing a book, and you get a bit of money coming in, and you can see more clearly how you're paying the bills. But it's not a good position for the serious novelist to be in.

I don't take myself too seriously. I think that's something so many actors and people in general tend to do.

Nerds are far more interesting human in later life.

I do feel my loved ones that have passed on; I feel them looking over my shoulder... So yeah, that's pretty profound, when you're not expecting it, you didn't particularly believe in it and then it just sort of happens too often to ignore.

One of the last courses I taught was on the Russian short story, which I love.

I was 30 years old and this girl I knew found out I had never gotten high. Nobody had ever told me about marijuana.

There's nothing like a jolly good disaster to get people to start doing something.

Get off the beaten path... If you want to find those mom-and-pop joints, those funky little places, just ask around.

Originality usually amounts only to plagiarizing something unfamiliar.

We live in bodies that are fearfully and wonderfully made, yet they are not immune to illness and pain. We have hearts that are capable of experiencing great love, but sometimes they get broken.

No life if it is properly realized is without its cosmic importance.

The negative side of football. The negative side of our society. People sometimes go to football and bring to it the negative aspects of our society.

You can eat a lot more vegetables than you can cotton candy. Bring on the veggies. Stay away from the fluffy carbs.

In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong.

I have no clue as to where my interest and love for music came from. In fact, I have never learnt any music either, though I wish that I could just close my eyes and play the piano - that is my most cherished desire.

Anyway, our family went into complete crisis mode. I have two older brothers, and we rallied as a family.

There is nothing noble in being superior to some other person. The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self.

If you can't give children optimism, then what are you doing?

You go through stages in your career that you feel very good about yourself. Then you feel awful, like, 'Why didn't I choose something else?' But overall I'm pretty satisfied that I made the right choice when I decided to be an actor.

Emmitt Smith is a great running back. One of the things I like about him along with Edgerrin James is that neither one of them 'show out' when they run a touchdown.

We can't reform mandatory spending in this area until we first deal with ours. I tell my colleagues, 'Let's get the moral high ground and demonstrate that we want to make changes to our pension, and then we can deal with the big problems.'

War can be prevented only by broad-minded statesmanship - a statesmanship that understands how to enlist people's interests in a leading cause.

You can't kill your way to success in a counter insurgency effort. You have to protect the people, get the civil military balance right, train the locals, and practice effective strategic communications.

Laissez Faire was very good sauce for the goose, labor, but was very poor sauce for the gander, capital.