We're all surrounded by what I call faux language, fake language of commerce, of news media.

I wish I’d a knowed more people. I would of loved ‘em all. If I’d a knowed more, I would a loved more

Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.

Women's rights is not only an abstraction, a cause; it is also a personal affair. It is not only about us; it is also about me and you. Just the two of us.

Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it.

I lived in a little working-class town that had no black neighborhoods at all - one high school. We all played together. Everybody was either somebody from the South or an immigrant from East Europe or from Mexico. And there was one church, and there were four elementary schools. And we were all, pretty much until the end of the war, very, very poor.

Risky, thought Paul D, very risky. For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love. The best thing, he knew, was to love just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you'd have a little love left over for the next one.