It is this belief in a power larger than myself and other than myself which allows me to venture into the unknown and even the unknowable.

Everybody in the world wants the same thing...to be needed...a job that he/she can do well...to love somebody...Everybody...There's no mystery.

I could fall in love with a sumo wrestler if he told stories and made me laugh. Obviously, it would be easier if someone was African-American and lived next door and went to the same church. Because then I wouldn't have to translate.

The music was my friend, my lover, my family.

You should be angry. You must not be bitter. Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. It doesn't do anything to the object of its displeasure. So use that anger. You write it. You paint it. You dance it. You march it. You vote it. You do everything about it. You talk it. Never stop talking it.

Black women have not historically stood in the pulpit, but that doesn't undermine the fact that they built the churches and maintain the pulpits.

Reality has changed chameleonlike before my eyes so many times that I have learned, or am learning, to trust almost anything except what appears to be so.