It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.

The reason people think it's important to be white is that they think it's important not to be black.

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.

A man's balance depends on the weight he carries between his legs.

Love is like the lightning, and your maturity is signaled by the extent to which you can accept the dangers and the power and the beauty of love.

The miracle is that some have stepped out of the rags of the Republic's definition to assume the great burden and glory of their humanity and their responsibility for one another. It is an extraordinary achievement to be trapped in the dungeon of color and to dare to shake down its walls and to step out of it leaving the jailkeeper in the rubble.

Color is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality.