People tend to think that life really does progress for everyone eventually, that people progress, but actually only some people progress. The rest of the people don't.

My God is not a religious God. My God is nature, my God is everything there is. That's God. Everything is God. I'm a child of that.

Some colored people so scared of whitefolks they claim to love the cotton gin.

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

... my mother adorned with flowers whatever shabby house we were forced to live in.

But I don't know how to fight. All I know how to do is stay alive.

In each of us, there is a little voice that knows exactly which way to go. And I learned very early to listen to it, even though it has caused so much grief and havoc, and I think that is the only answer.