What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors.

She was twenty and had come to realize that, though she had a voice, she wasn't a singer; that to endure and embrace the life of a singer demands a whole lot more than a voice.

All over Harlem, Negro boys and girls are growing into stunted maturity, trying desperately to find a place to stand; and the wonder is not that so many are ruined but that so many survive.

Love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?

The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment.

The place in which I'll fit will not exist until I make it.

What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors.