You're not here just to be a clone. You're not here to be a copy. We have enough of those. You don't have to apply. You don't even have to go there to be absolutely yourself - real, here, now, on this planet.

Odinary people don't have a feeling of being loved by the people who manage to get into positions of leadership. They get in there, they make a lot of money, and then they play games with us.

What did it mean for a black woman to be an artist in our grandmothers' time? In our great-grandmothers' day? It is an answer cruel enough to stop the blood.

To me war is something to be outgrown, recognized as immature, wasteful, and so destructive to life that human beings should shun it ... as they once shunned bubonic plague.

Nature has created us with the capacity to know God, to experience God.

I think I'm led by spirit. I think I'm led by a sense of what is right and what feels good to me - what I accept, what is joyful, what is positive. I see my mission, in a way, as carrying that forward - not so much by preaching, but by embodiment.

Love yourself. Just love yourself. In fact, the love of the self cures every kind of problem you have with yourself. For instance, if someone calls you nappy-headed, it rolls right off your body, if you love nappy hair. Or if someone calls you buck-toothed or too black, that won't be a problem if you love being buck-toothed or black. If you love it, then so what. The development of self-love cures many of the ills that people suffer from.