I sometimes lose interest in the characters and get much more interested in the trees and animals.

Girl, I got my mind. And what goes on in it. Which is to say, I got me...my lonely is mine.

The concept of physical beauty as a virtue is one of the dumbest, most pernicious and destructive ideas of the Western world, and we should have nothing to do with it.

Being able to laugh got me through.

When you know your name, you should hang on to it, for unless it is noted down and remembered, it will die when you do.

There is a certain kind of peace that is not merely the absence of war. It is larger than that. The peace I am thinking of is not at the mercy of history's rule, nor is it a passive surrender to the status quo. The peace I am thinking of is the dance of an open mind when it engages another equally open one -- an activity that occurs most naturally, most often in the reading/writing world we live in. Accessible as it is, this particular kind of peace warrants vigilance.

Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.