In Stamps the segregation was so complete that most Black children didn't really, absolutely know what whites looked like.

I've tried to be totally present, so that when I'm finished with a piece of work, I'm finished. ... The work, once completed, does not need me. The work I'm working on needs my total concentration. The one that's finished doesn't belong to me anymore. It belongs to itself.

Being a woman is hard work.

It is this belief in a power larger than myself and other than myself which allows me to venture into the unknown and even the unknowable.

I did get knocked down flat in front of the whole world, and I rose. I didn't run away - I rose right where I'd been knocked down. And then that's how you get to know yourself. You say, hmm, I can get up!

Be the rainbow in someone else's cloud.

Martin Luther King was a human being with a brilliant mind, a powerful heart, and insight, and courage and also with a sense of humor. So he was accessible.