The fact that educated white women automatically assume that we have similar backgrounds annoys me. We don't. I feel like I'm in a certain kind of drag.

I'm actually a lowlife. On the street at fifteen and also in jail for the first time at that age, and off and on the street until my mid-twenties.

I couldn't stand living in a society that admires the emperor's new clothes, when I see so clearly that he is naked.

Prison experience puts distance between me and any person who hasn't been there, done that.

My published works are concrete evidence that I exist.

The loss of a sexual life is one of the worst things about getting really old. The worst thing.

At eighty-one, health club-lusting is as close as I'll ever come to getting laid again.