You have to steal back yourself. You have to steal back your own mind. Meditation helps in that area.

I just like to have words that describe things correctly. Now to me, 'black feminist' does not do that. I need a word that is organic, that really comes out of the culture, that really expresses the spirit that we see in black women. And it's just... womanish.

No song or poem will bear my mother's name. Yet so many of the stories that I write, that we all write, are my mother's stories.

There are those who believe Black people possess the secret of joy and that it is this that will sustain them through any spiritual or moral or physical devastation.

Every small positive change we make in ourselves repays us in confidence in the future.

Animals were not made for us, or our use. They have their own use, which is just being who they are.

I think that wealthy white people would like to have a country that resembles the Fifties, when all the minorities were tucked away in ghettos and paid in very low wages but on the surface it was very bright and shiny and free and the rest of the world would look on it longingly.