in our ordinaryness we are most bizarre.

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

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

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.

nice is such a rip-off.

I started writing because there's an absence of things I was familiar with or that I dreamed about. One of my senses of anger is related to this vacancy - a yearning I had as a teenager. . .and when I get ready to write, I think I'm trying to fill that. . .

I write for young girls of color, for girls who don’t even exist yet, so that there is something there for them when they arrive. I can only change how they live, not how they think.