The unflattering reviews are painful for short periods of time; the badly written ones are deeply, deeply insulting. That reviewer took no time to really read the book.

No matter what all your teeth and wet fingers anticipated, there was no accounting for the way that simple joy could shake you.

You free. Nothing and nobody is obliged to save you but you.

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

If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

I don't work. I keep telling people I'm unemployed. And I don't wash dishes, and I don't wash clothes, and I don't clean my house. Somebody else does that.

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.