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.

If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic.

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

She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.

My children are delightful people, whom I would love even if they weren't my children.

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

I wish I’d a knowed more people. I would of loved ‘em all. If I’d a knowed more, I would a loved more