I always knew from that moment, from the time I found myself at home in that little segregated library in the South, all the way up until I walked up the steps of the New York City library, I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, I'll be okay. It really helped me as a child, and that never left me. So I have a special place for every library, in my heart of hearts.

Each of us has a responsibility for being alive: one responsibility to creation, of which we are a part, another to the creator a debt we repay by trying to extend our areas of comprehension.

I couldn't tell fact from fiction, Or if the dream was true My only sure prediction In this world was you. I'd touch your features inchly. Beard love and dared the cost, The sented spiel reeled me unreal And I found my senses lost.

Education is a process that goes on 'til death. The moment you see someone who knows she has found the one true way, and can call all the others false, then you know you're in the company of an ignoramus.

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise. I rise. I rise.

The woman who survives intact and happy must be at once tender and tough.

I'm a descendant of someone bought and sold, and brought in 1619 in what was to become the United States.