It had been the longest time since she had had a rib-scraping laugh. She had forgotten how deep and down it could be. So different from the miscellaneous giggles and smiles she had learned to be content with these past few years.

I don't work. I keep telling people I'm unemployed. And I don't wash dishes, and I don't wash clothes, and I don't clean my house. Somebody else does that.

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

I type in one place, but I write all over the house.

Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another - physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion.

Black women have always been friends. I mean, if you didn't have each other you had nothing.

In my mother's church, everybody read the Bible and it was mostly about music. My mother had the most beautiful voice I have ever heard in my life. She could sing anything - classical, jazz, blues, opera. And people came from long distances to that little church she went to - African Methodist Episcopal, the AME church she belonged to - just hear her.