Novels allow me to create a whole world.

The slaves who were ourselves had known terror intimately, confused sunrise with pain, & accepted indifference as kindness.

in our ordinaryness we are most bizarre.

I am gonna write poems til i die and when i have gotten outta this body i am gonna hang round in the wind and knock over everybody who got their feet on the ground.

Being alive and being a woman is all I got, but being colored is a metaphysical dilemma I haven't conquered yet.

When I die, I will no be guilty of having left a generation of girls behind thinking that anyone can tend to their emotional health other than themselves.

I've never thought of leaving the South, never.