Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation.

Sometimes the names were humiliating, deliberately so. Somebody would pick out your flaw. If you were little, they would call you Shorty. And if you were angry, they would call you the Devil.

Beauty was not simply something to behold; it was something one could do.

There is an incredible amount of magic and feistiness in black men that nobody has been able to wipe out. But everybody has tried.

People say to write about what you know. I'm here to tell you, no one wants to read that, cos you don't know anything. So write about something you don't know. And don't be scared, ever.

The children - I call them children when they're under 18 - are hungry for that love. The drugs are just a sleep that you can't even wake up from, because you might remember what you did when you were there. There's no place for them - there should be a rehabilitation center on every corner, along with McDonald's and the banks. This is serious business. The waiting lists are incredible. I mean, it's terrible. It's really terrible.

Women's rights is not only an abstraction, a cause; it is also a personal affair. It is not only about us; it is also about me and you. Just the two of us.