I guess I would have gotten over Helene by summertime, but something happened in that classroom that made her face hang in front of me for the next twenty-two years. When I played the drums in high school, it was for Helene, and when I broke track records in college, it was for Helene, and when I started standing behind microphones and heard applause, I wished Helene could hear it too.

It was on a Thursday. I was sitting in the back of the room, in a seat with a chalk circle drawn around it. The idiot's seat, the troublemaker's seat.

The teacher thought I was stupid. Couldn't spell, couldn't read, couldn't do arithmetic. Just stupid. Teachers were never interested in finding out that you couldn't concentrate because you were so hungry, because you hadn't had any breakfast.

Pregnant people get strange tastes. I was pregnant with poverty. Pregnant with dirt and pregnant with smells that made people turn away. Pregnant with cold and pregnant with shoes that were never bought for me. Pregnant with five other people in my bed and no daddy in the next room, and pregnant with hunger.

The teacher thought I was a troublemaker. All she saw from the front of the room was a little black boy who squirmed in his idiot's seat and made noises and poked the kids around him. I guess she couldn't see a kid who made noises because he wanted someone to know he was there.

Because nothing makes me happier, and nothing makes me sadder than you.

Life is depressing enough already.

The pain is everywhere.

Don't forget that you are a human. It's okay to have a melt down. Just don't unpack and live there. Cry it out and then refocus on where you are headed.

Things that make life easier: a parent's hug, a lover's kiss, a friend's support.
让生活变得轻松的三样东西：父母的拥抱恋人的亲吻，以及朋友的支持。

If you don't go after what you want, you'll never have it. If you don't ask, the answer is always no. If you don't step forward, you are always in the same place.

Nobody cares about your story until you win. So win.

刚刚看完这篇文章，写得超级好，极力推荐大家去看！！虽然有点长但是还挺容易看懂。

When I was a senior in high school, I sat on the front porch with my dad one warm South Carolina afternoon and asked him about that night.
"Weren't you afraid?"I asked.
"Afraid? Of what?" my dad asked, giving me a kind of funny look.
"Well, you know," I said awkwardly ,"afraid of the kind of a white people who hate blacks. What if they had found out that we were at that service that night? Weren't you afraid of what they might think or do?"
My dad stared at me for a long time before he answered. "You mother and I have nver been afraid of what bigots think of us. And we certainly weren't going to bullied into hiding the way we felt just because some racists thought we were wrong."
"Yeah, but when every one found out, you lost a lot of friends."
"Not a lot of friends------a few. But that's a small price to pay to be true to yourself. I'm sorry to lose some friends , but I'd be sorrier to be living my life according to how other people think I should live it."
"Really?" I asked. "You really think that?"
"Yes, I really know that," my dad answered.