More than fear of loving bears or birds bigger than cows, I fear pathless nights. How, I wonder, can I find you in the dark?

Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love a free man is never safe. There is no gift for the beloved. the lover alone possesses his gift of love. The loved one is shorn, neutralized, frozen in the glance of the lover’s inward eyes.

I don't do the things other people call "play."

My world did not shrink because I was a black female writer. It just got bigger.

The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.

There is nothing of any consequence in education, in the economy, in city planning, in social policy that does not concern black people.

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.