I wish that she had had a black loon because I don't think that Nina [Simone] did. I have always had - I've been very fortunate - a group of little old ladies that I love and who love me, and who turned and to whom I turn at different times.

I think that too many strangers were in her [Nina Simone's] life, and not enough people that she knew and loved.

We love because it's the only true adventure.

I think one of the nicest things that we created as a generation was just the fact that we could say, 'Hey, I don't like white people.'

My main strength as a young writer was that I had no fear of making mistakes. I knew I would and I knew I could and would learn from them.

Black Americans should be given credit for finding probably the perfect weapon; the weapon of the song. And that song continues. Most holocausts don't, so they have this bitterness left over. The phenomenon of the world, as far as Black Americans are considered, is that we are not a bitter people.

You must be unintimidated by your own thoughts because if you write with someone looking over you shoulder, you'll never write.