If I’d a knowed more, I would a loved more.

Books ARE a form of political action. Books are knowledge. Books are reflection. Books change your mind.

A son ain't what a woman say. A son is what a man do.

When you gone to get married? You need to have some babies. It’ll settle you.' 'I don’t want to make somebody else. I want to make myself.

She had been looking all along for a friend, and it took her a while to discover that a lover was not a comrade and could never be - for a woman. And that no one would ever be that version of herself which she sought to reach out to and touch with an ungloved hand. There was only her own mood and whim, and if that was all there was, she decided to turn the naked hand toward it, discover it and let others become as intimate with their own selves as she was.

Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it, summon it, from even the most tragic of circumstances.

Being good to somebody is just like being mean to somebody. Risky. You don't get nothing for it.