On becoming more acquainted with the word of the Bible, I began to understand so much more of what I had been taught, and of what I had learned about life and about the people in mine.

It was my father who taught me to value myself. He told me that I was uncommonly beautiful and that I was the most precious thing in his life.

“In my day the schools taught two things, love of country and penmanship-now they don't teach either.”

I was taught to strive not because there were any guarantees of success but because the act of striving is in itself the only way to keep faith with life.