What did it mean for a black woman to be an artist in our grandmothers' time? In our great-grandmothers' day? It is an answer cruel enough to stop the blood.

One thing that never ceases to amaze me, along with the growth of vegetation from the earth and of hair from the head, is the growth of understanding.

I am an elder, and I am delighted to be an elder. I would like to exhibit [and] explore it more - what an elder could mean in this time. But, I'd like to show that elders are good for us - that they can be good for us.

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it. People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.

I don't know if you actually get something out of writing poetry. I think poetry is an autonomous muse that decides to come and sit on your couch.

I think colors are miraculous. We live in a universe that is extremely creative and magical. We become happier as we appreciate these things in nature.

To acknowledge our ancestors means we are aware that we did not make ourselves, that the line stretches all the way back, perhaps to God; or to Gods. We remember them because it is an easy thing to forget: that we are not the first to suffer, rebel, fight, love and die. The grace with which we embrace life, in spite of the pain, the sorrow, is always a measure of what has gone before.