The trouble with our people is as soon as they got out of slavery they didn't want to give the white man nothing else. But the fact is, you got to give em something. Either your money, your land, your woman or your ass.

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.

She thought of how precious it was to be able to know another person over many years. There was incomparable richness in it.

Everything is already perfect. And if you can accept that everything is already perfect, the imperfection is a part of the perfection. What's to worry about?

Those in power must spend a lot of their time laughing at us.

If a person is hit hard enough, even if she stands, she falls.

I write not only what I want to read...I write all the things I should have been able to read.