Liberation means you don't have to be silenced.

There's a contract that I make between myself, the author, and the reader. I have to figure out how to give the reader certain powers of recognition, or his own knowledge, his own feelings, but I provide them, so we're working together.

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

In becoming an American, from Europe, what one has in common with that other immigrant is contempt for me-it's nothing else but color.

I began to realize that this idea of the lighter the better and the darker the worse was really - had an impact on sororities, on friendships, on all sorts of things, and it was stunning to me.

Not knowing it was hard; knowing it was harder

A dream is just a nightmare with lipstick.