Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannot influence - neither speed up nor slow down, add to nor diminish - it is an imponderably valuable gift. Each of us has a few minutes a day or a few hours a week which we could donate to an old folks home or a children's hospital ward. The elderly whose pillows we plump or whose water pitchers we refill may or may not thank us for our gift, but the gift is upholding the foundation of the universe.

There is a kind of strength that is almost frightening in Black women. It's as if a steel rod runs right through the head down to the feet.

I also wear a hat or a very tightly pulled head tie when I write. I suppose I hope by doing that I will keep my brains from seeping out of my scalp and running in great gray blobs down my neck, into my ears, and over my face.

We can learn to see each other and see ourselves in each other and recognize that human beings are more alike than we are unalike.

The love of the family, the love of one person can heal. It heals the scars left by a larger society. A massive, powerful society.

I do not need to know all things. I remind myself that it is sufficient that I know what I know and know that without believing that I will always know what I know or that what I know will always be true.

We are all human; therefore, nothing human can be alien to us.