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.

Because of technological breakthroughs, the society will need fewer and fewer unskilled laborers.

To take a few nouns, and a few pronouns, and adverbs and adjectives, and put them together, ball them up, and throw them against the wall to make them bounce. That's what Norman Mailer did. That's what James Baldwin did, and Joan Didion did, and that's what I do - that's what I mean to do.

I’m grateful for being here, for being able to think, for being able to see, for being able to taste, for appreciating love – for knowing that it exists in a world so rife with vulgarity, with brutality and violence, and yet love exists. I’m grateful to know that it exists.

Few, if any, survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity.

There is something more - the spirit, or the soul. I think that that quality encourages our courtesy and care and our minds. And mercy, and identity.

Continue. Be loving and be strong. Be fierce and be kind. And don't give in and don't give up.'