At least be a nice lesbian or you're going to give the rest a bad rap.

life is like a jigsaw puzzle, you have to see the whole picture, then put it together piece by piece!

I don't trust white critics' judgment about most things that deal with black life, particularly when a black person is the creator.

I like to think of what happens to characters in good novels and stories as knots--things keep knotting up. And by the end of the story--readers see an unknotting of sorts. Not what you expect, not the easy answers you get on TV, not wash and wear philosophies, but a reproduction of believable, emotional experiences.

It's sad to think that we've gotten to this, that we actually have to think about how to go about finding a man. But what's even sadder is that some men make you feel guilty for looking.

I remember the day I turned thirty. I was getting out of the shower and I stood in front of the mirror and stared at myself for a long time. I examined every inch of my body and appreciated the fact that I finally looked like a grown woman. I also assumed that this was how I was going to look for the rest of my life. The way I saw it, I was never going to age; I'd just look up one day and be old.

We get divorce, we get conned, someone we love dies, or we can't find anybody to love us or somebody breaks our heart and we realize this fairy tale ain't fair. So we suffer.