I have enough of life in me to make somebody jealous enough to want to knock me down. I have so much courage in me that I have the effrontery, the incredible gall to stand up. That's it. That's how you get to know who you are.

Ain't nothin' to it, but to do it.

As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them.

Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.

Talent is like electricity. We don't understand electricity. We use it.

I believed that there was a God because I was told it by my grandmother and later by other adults. But when I found that I knew not only that there was God but that I was a child of God, when I understood that, when I comprehended that, more than that, when I internalized that, ingested that, I became courageous.

We all have that possibility, that potential and that promise of seeing beyond the seeming.