To realise our dreams we must decide to wake up.

He was my cream, and I was his coffee - And when you poured us together, it was something.

I believe if the white and colored people could get together and be let alone, they would understand each other and consequently love each other.

One day I realized I was living in a country where I was afraid to be black. It was only a country for white people. Not black. So I left. I had been suffocating in the United States... A lot of us left, not because we wanted to leave, but because we couldn't stand it anymore... I felt liberated in Paris.

What am I most ashamed of in my life? Not keeping my promise to my sister and being too scared of America to attend her funeral.

Is that what they call a vocation, what you do with joy as if you had fire in your heart, the devil in your body?

I was learning the importance of names - having them, making them - but at the same time I sensed the dangers. Recognition was followed by oblivion, a yawning maw whose victims disappeared without a trace.