Amy Hill Hearth Quotes

Maybe freedom means defining yourself any way you want to be.

One person can come along and change your life, and that being a misfit, as I was, doesn't mean you won't find friends and your place in the world.

There's an old Southern saying that if you're worried about your weight, clothes, or getting old, then you don't have any real problems.

When you're in a train and it breaks down, well, there you is. But when you're in a plane and it breaks down, there you AIN'T.

When people ask me how we've lived past one hundred, I say, 'Honey, we never married. We never had husbands to worry us to death!
A. Elizabeth (Bessie) Delany

I suppose there are two worlds-the small, protected one we carve out for ourselves, where we fret about a whole lot of nothing, and the other world, the real one, which comes knocking at the door, demanding to be let in and given a seat.

All I ever wanted in my life was to be treated as an individual. I have succeeded, to some extent. At least I'm sure that in the Lord's eyes, I am an individual. I am not a "colored" person, or a "Negro" person, in God's eyes. I am just me! The Lord won't hold it against me that I'm colored because He made me that way! He thinks I am beautiful! And so do I, even with all my wrinkles! I am beautiful!

-Bessie

How hard it must be to keep fighting for a dream when that dream is probably a mirage.

Anyway, they went and built this silly housing project, with us living right across the street from it. Some of the children from the housing project got into trouble. You can't just take people who don't have anything, don't know what they're doing, pack them in a bunch of buildings, and expect it's going to all work out somehow.
- Sadie

I could see the genius in allowing future to evolve. You could create momentum. You could launch something and see where it goes. You couldn't line everything up, like so many dominoes, and make everything fall into place.

Their story, as the Delany sisters like to say, is not meant as "black" or "women's" history, but American history. It belongs to all of us. (From the Preface of "Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years)

[My grandmother Mamie] used to say, 'Marion, if you don't feel right, if you don't feel good, just go outside. Take care of your flower bed and forget about everything else. If it's wintertime, go dig yourself a path in the snow whether you need it or not. You don't have to think too much to plant anything or scoop snow, and your mind can go back and figure out what's wrong.' I still take her advice to this day. (From Marion "Strong Medicine" Gould)

Mama used to say that when you don't know what to do, do nothing. She meant you can try too hard to solve a problem. If you give it a little time, the answer might just come to you plain as day.