The things we truly love stay with us always, locked in our hearts as long as life remains.

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.

I shall dance all my life. . . . I would like to die, breathless, spent, at the end of a dance.

One dance had made me the most famous colored woman in the world.

I wasn't really naked. I simply didn't have any clothes on.

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.

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