Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don't even recognize that growth is happening...Those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting, holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be, eventually become the periods we wait for, for it is in those periods that we realize that we are being prepared for the next phase of our life and that, in all probability, a new level of the personality is about to be revealed.

It's better to have your blackness taken away than to stand there and lie about who you actually are. That's the trap.

Artists are messengers whose responsibility is to unite the world -- a faith that will lead not to destruction but to transformation.

I could never live happily in Africa-or anywhere else-until I could live freely in Mississippi.

I have never felt that the one thing that I am 'known for' is what I am.

A burnt finger remember the fire.

Aside from the fact that they say it's unhealthy, my fat ain't never been no trouble. Mens always have loved me. My kids ain't never complained. Plus they's fat.