Now when you hates you shrinks up inside and gets littler and you squeezes your heart tight and you stays so mad with peoples you feels sick all the time like you needs the doctor.

A writer needs certain conditions in which to work and create art. She needs a piece of time; a peace of mind; a quiet place; and a private life.

Racism is so extreme and so pervasive in our American society that no black individual lives in an atmosphere of freedom.

I want my careless song to strike no minor key; no fiend to stand between my body's Southern song - the fusion of the South, my body's song and me.

My grandmothers are full of memories, smelling of soap and onions and wet clay, with veins rolling roughly over quick hands, they have many clean words to say, my grandmothers were strong.

The poetry of a people comes from the deep recesses of the unconscious, the irrational and the collective body of our ancestral memories.

When I was about eight, I decided that the most wonderful thing, next to a human being, was a book.