To get to a place where you could love anything you chose--not to need permission for desire--well now _that_ was freedom.

A lot of black people believe that Jews in this country have become white. They behave like white people rather than Jewish people.

Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.

I write the way women have babies. You don't know it's going to be like that. If you did, there's no way you would go through with it.

You looked at me then like you knew me, and I thought it really was Eden, and I couldn't take your eyes in because I was loving the hoof marks on your cheeks.

The Administration of the United States is such dread I almost feel paralyzed.

Well, feel this, why don't you? Feel how it feels to have a bed to sleep in and somebody there not worrying you to death about what you got to do each day to deserve it. Feel how that feels. And if that don't get it, feel how it feels to be a colored woman roaming the roads with anything God made liable to jump on you. Feel that.