She left me the way people leave a hotel room. A hotel room is a place to be when you are doing something else. Of itself it is of no consequence to one's major scheme. A hotel room is convenient. But its convenience is limited to the time you need it while you are in that particular town on that particular business; you hope it is comfortable, but prefer, rather, that it be anoymous. It is not, after all, where you live.

Birth, life, and death― each took place on the hidden side of a leaf.

Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all.

When you gone to get married? You need to have some babies. It’ll settle you.' 'I don’t want to make somebody else. I want to make myself.

A man ain't nothing but a man. But a son? Well, now, that's somebody.

I always start out with an idea, even a boring idea, that becomes a question I don't have answers to.

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