And talking about dark! You think dark is just one color, but it ain't. There're five or six kinds of black. Some silky, some woolly. Some just empty. Some like fingers. And it don't stay still, it moves and changes from one kind of black to another. Saying something is pitch black is like saying something is green. What kind of green? Green like my bottles? Green like a grasshopper? Green like a cucumber, lettuce, or green like the sky is just before it breaks loose to storm? Well, night black is the same way. May as well be a rainbow.

Beloved, you are my sister, you are my daughter, you are my face; you are me.

There's a contract that I make between myself, the author, and the reader. I have to figure out how to give the reader certain powers of recognition, or his own knowledge, his own feelings, but I provide them, so we're working together.

When am I happy and when am I sad and what is the difference? What do I need to know to stay alive? What is true in the world?

We read about how Ajax and Achilles will die for each other, but very little about the friendship of women.

My world did not shrink because I was a black female writer. It just got bigger.

Like Guitar in Son of Solomon, and Son in Tar Baby, he believed that harmony could never exist between the races.