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

But maybe a man was nothing but a man, which is what Baby Suggs always said. They encouraged you to put some of your weight in their hands and soon as you felt how light and lovely that was, they studied your scars and tribulations, after which they did what he had done: ran her children out and tore up the house. [...] A man ain't nothing but a man,' said Baby Suggs. 'But a son? Well now, that's somebody.

Nobody loved her and she wouldn’t have liked it if they had, she considered love a serious disability.

Somebody has to take responsibility for being a leader.

But her brain was not interested in the future. Loaded with the past and hungry for more, it left her no room to imagine, let alone plan for, the next day.

I write the way women have babies. You don't know it's going to be like that. If you did, there's no way you would go through with it.

If you're going to hold someone down you're going to have to hold on by the other end of the chain. You are confined by your own repression.