Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another - physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion.

What I'm doing ain't about hating White people. It's about loving us.

Beginning 'Beloved' with numerals rather than spelled out numbers, it was my intention to give the house an identity separate from the street or even the city.

Black women have always been friends. I mean, if you didn't have each other you had nothing.

I really want some meaning. It used to be easy to toss it off. Now it's harder and harder. You have to navigate just to find something that has nourishment. It's the absence of nourishment. What do you do in place of nourishment? It's usually junk. Either it's junk food or junk clothes or junk ideas.

Like Guitar in Son of Solomon, and Son in Tar Baby, he believed that harmony could never exist between the races.

The best art is political and you ought to be able to make it unquestionably political and irrevocably beautiful at the same time.