My mother had said me, "All right, you've been raised, so don't let anybody else raise you. You know the difference between right and wrong. Do right. And remember - you can always come home." And she continued to liberate me until she died. On the night she died, I went to the hospital. I told my mom, "Let me tell you about yourself. You deserved a great daughter, and you got one. And you liberated me to be one. So if it's time for you to go, you may have done everything God brought you here to do."

I speak to the black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition.

You can't really know where you are going until you know where you have been.

When a person is going through hell, and she encounters someone who went through hellish hell and survived, then she can say, 'Mine is not so bad as all that. She came through, and so can I.'

Alone, all alone Nobody, but nobody Can make it out here alone.

You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody.

I speak a number of languages, but none are more beautiful to me than English.