I hit my head against the wall because I don't want to know all the terrible things that I know about. I don't want to feel all these wretched things, but they're in me already. If I don't get rid of them, I'm not ever going to feel anything else.

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

I'm a firm believer that language and how we use language determines how we act, and how we act then determines our lives and other people's lives.

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.

Creation is everything you do. Make something.

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