A sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves - a special kind of double.

They held hands and knew that only the coffin would lie in the earth; the bubbly laughter and the press of fingers in the palm would stay aboveground forever. At first, as they stood there, their hands were clenched together. They relaxed slowly until during the walk back home their fingers were laced in as gentle a clasp as that of any two young girlfriends trotting up the road on a summer day wondering what happened to butterflies in the winter.

I had only one desire: to dismember it. To see of what it was made, to discover the dearness, to find the beauty, the desirability that had escaped me, but apparently only me.

Misery don't call ahead. That's why you have to stay awake - otherwise it just walks on in your door.

There is an incredible amount of magic and feistiness in black men that nobody has been able to wipe out. But everybody has tried.

The function of freedom is to free someone else.

Being good to somebody is just like being mean to somebody. Risky. You don't get nothing for it.