Once someone gets a little escape velocity going, ain't no play in the world that will keep them from leaving.

Run a hand through your hair, like the white boys do, even though the only thing that runs easily through your hair is Africa.

...sometimes a start is all we ever get.

Shot at twenty-seven times - what a Dominican number.

If you, like, consciously think about being cool, you're not cool. If you consciously think about being, like, different or original, you ain't different or original.

Now people like Susan Sarandon are noticing that people of color live this way?! This is the way I've always lived! What's happened is that it has now reached a level of national discourse where it's on the table. But they've never minded that we were treated like this off-stage.

You can't find intimacy - you can't find home - when you're always hiding behind masks. Intimacy requires a certain level of vulnerability. It requires a certain level of you exposing your fragmented, contradictory self to someone else. You running the risk of having your core self rejected and hurt and misunderstood.