Through my grandmother's stories always life moved, moved heroically toward an end. Nobody ever cried in my grandmother's stories. They worked, or schemed, or fought. But no crying. When my grandmother died, I didn't cry, either. Something about my grandmother's stories (without her ever having said so) taught me the uselessness of crying about anything."

Life is an egg you have to be patient and careful with it or it will break.

One of the great difficulties about being a member of a minority race is that so many kindhearted, well-meaning bores gather around to help.

So since I'm still here livin', I guess I will live on. I could've died for love-- But for livin' I was born.

Though you may hear me holler, And you may see me cry-- I'll be dogged, sweet baby, If you gonna see me die.

Don't come giving me, who's old enough to die and too near blind to create anything any more anyhow, a great big banquet that you eat up in honor of your own stomachs as much as in honor of me- who's toothless and can't eat.

I'm so tired of waiting, aren't you, for the world to become good and beautiful and kind?