I will write on the pages of history what I want them to say. I will be myself. I will speak my own name.

We are more alike than unalike.

All riddles are blues, / And all blues are sad, / And I'm only mentioning / Some blues I've had.

Nothing hurts more than realizing they meant everything to you, but you meant nothing to them.

If you're serious, you really understand that it's important that you laugh as much as possible and admit that you're the funniest person you ever met. You have to laugh. Admit that you're funny. Otherwise, you die in solemnity.

A woman who is convinced that she deserves to accept only the best challenges herself to give the best. Then she is living phenomenally.

The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn't need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder-in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.