Writing about people helps us to understand them, and understanding them helps us to accept them as part of ourselves.

I don't focus on criticism. I prefer to praise people and the world, rather than criticize them and it.

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.

I am not interested in being a role model, or in fulfilling the expectations of others. I know I am of most use to others and to myself by being this unique self: Nature, I have noticed, is not particularly devoted to copies, and human beings needn't be either.

I come from somewhere and from specific black people in the South, including my parents, who built our first school, and rebuilt it after it was burned to the ground. And they used to bake pies and cakes to raise money to keep it going. So, I learned to struggle from a very early way in a way that was truly indigenous to the South.

Guided by my heritage of a love of beauty and a respect for strength - in search of my mother's garden, I found my own.

How sad now never to see men holding hands, while everywhere one looks they are holding guns.