When a child walks in the room, your child or anybody else’s child, do your eyes light up? That’s what they’re looking for.

At some point in life, the world's beauty becomes enough.

[Obama is ] creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom . . . [He is] the man for this time.

Literature, it seems to me, is wisdom.

Sometimes what I write on the page frightens me, so I feel free when I write, but I don't feel safe.

This is really skin privilege, the ranking of color in terms of its closeness to white people or white-skinned people and its devaluation according to how dark one is and the impact that has on people who are dedicated to the privileges of certain levels of skin color.

You been gone too long, Sula. Not too long, but maybe too far.