Each member of the family in his own cell of consciousness, each making his own patchwork quilt of reality - collecting fragments of experience here, pieces of information there. From the tiny impressions gleaned from one another, they created a sense of belonging and tried to make do with the way they found each other.

This word "LOVE" - discredited, "clicheed" - can be restored and love, the instinct, the impulse to care for somebody in the hope that somebody will care for you - plus our language, the language, a language - is about all we have. With everything else going on, this is what makes us, what keeps us human.

I am in the position of judging people by the best they've ever done rather than the worst.

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

Beauty was not simply something to behold; it was something one could do.

It's a bad word, 'belong.' Especially when you put it with somebody you love ... You can't own a human being.

The peace I am thinking of is the dance of an open mind when it engages another equally open one.