And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed.

I want to thank you, Lord, for life and all that's in it. Thank you for the day and for the hour, and the minute.

The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn't need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder-in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.

I would welcome a friendship with Lynne Hinton. I would welcome an invitation to sit down at her table, but mostly I would welcome her next book.

Live life as if it were created just for you.

If somebody is really trying to take your head off with a baseball bat - I don't know how long you're supposed to stand there and turn the other cheek, so he or she can get a better angle at taking your head off.

No one can take the place of a friend, no one.