Listen up. Let me tell you something. A man ain’t a goddamn ax. Chopping, hacking, busting every goddamn minute of the day. Things get to him. Things he can’t chop down because they’re inside.

American means white, and Africanist people struggle to make the term applicable to themselves with ethnicity and hyphen after hyphen after hyphen.

You need a whole community to raise a child. I have raised two children, alone.

No gasp at a miracle that is truly miraculous because the magic lies in the fact that you knew it was there for you all along.

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

Black boys became criminalized. I was in constant dread for their lives, because they were targets everywhere. They still are.

My metaphor is that evil always has a top hat and a cape, and goodness is over there in the corner. For me it's just too easy, if you hate your country or your wife, so you kill them. You can't think through that, you can't feel through that, you can't do the work. And now we have guns. Solution? I don't think so.