A mother is she who can take the place of all others but whose place no one else can take.

I was thrilled one year when I was younger when not only did my brothers get hockey sticks for Christmas - but I did too!

I had eight brothers and sisters. Every Christmas my younger brother Bobby would wake up extra early and open everybody's presents - everybody's - so by the time the rest of us got up all the gifts were shredded ribbons off torn open and thrown aside.

My mother would give my brothers and me a pile of catalogues and let us pick what we wanted for Christmas.

The companies that make meaningful contributions while also listening to the voices of others are the ones that will genuinely engage their community who will then go to work for them.

Everyone has a story that makes me stronger. I know that the work I do is important and I enjoy it but it is nice to hear the feedback of what we do to inspire others.

We learned about dignity and decency - that how hard you work matters more than how much you make... that helping others means more than just getting ahead yourself.

Some slaves are scoured to their work by whips others by their restlessness and ambition.

Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others.

I am the woman I grew to be partly in spite of my mother and partly because of the extraordinary love of her best friends and my own best friends' mothers and from surrogates many of whom were not women at all but gay men. I have loved them my entire life even after their passing.

All my friends' mothers were appalling women.

In their 30s women really start to live... they're not children anymore and they're not just mothers.

I always believed that women have rights and that there are some women that are intelligent enough to claim those rights. There are some others that are stupid enough not to.

For any of us in this room today let's start out by admitting we're lucky. We don't live in the world our mothers lived in our grandmothers lived in where career choices for women were so limited.

Breast cancer is not just a disease that strikes at women. It strikes at the very heart of who we are as women: how others perceive us how we perceive ourselves how we live work and raise our families-or whether we do these things at all.

In my work and in myself I reflect black people women and men as I reflect others. One day even the most self-protective ones will look into the mirror I provide and not be afraid.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.