Everybody's got some sin, but if it troubles your heart you're a gentle sinner, just a good soul gone wrong.

I'm independent as a hog on ice and a hog on ice is dead, cold, well-preserved and don't need a mother'grabbin, thing.

The Black writer explains pain to those who inflict it.

writing is a labor of love and also an act of defiance, a way to light a candle in a gale wind.

The twisted circumstances under which we live is grist for the writing mill, the loving, hating and discovering, finding new handles for old pitchers . . .

Where did we get the idea of insultin' folks by pointin' out their age? ... It seems that we think youth is some special accomplishment brought about by the individual himself!

Like snowflakes, the human pattern is never cast twice. We are uncommonly and marvelously intricate in thought and action, our problems are most complex and, too often, silently borne.