I'm where I need to be, so my heart is light. Whatever happens, I know - I mean, I feel - that this is absolutely where I should be and I've lived up to my own expectations.

A writer's heart, a poet's heart, an artist's heart, a musician's heart is always breaking. It is through that broken window that we see the world.

Love likes to extend itself. If you receive it in a book - or however you get it - then your duty is to extend it beyond.

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.

One white man on the platform in South Carolina asked us where we were going--we had got off the train to get some fresh air and to dust the grit and dust out of our clothes. When we said Africa he looked offended and tickled too. Niggers going to Africa, he said to his wife. Now I have seen everything.

Yes, Mother. I can see you are flawed. You have not hidden it. That is your greatest gift to me.

The hardest part is when you're in danger yourself. You have to face what could happen and might be likely to happen to you. It's not just that you're there standing next to somebody that something bad is likely to happen to. That is a true moment of reckoning with who you really are.