It's always seemed to me that black people's grace has been with what they do with language. In Lorrain, Ohio, when I was a child, I went to school with and heard the stories of Mexicans, Italians, and Greeks, and I listened. I remember their language, and a lot of it is marvelous. But when I think of things my mother or father or aunts used to say, it seems the most absolutely striking thing in the world.

If happiness is anticipation with certainty, we were happy.

Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.

Black women are the touchstone by which all that is human can be measured.

When a man angers you, he conquers you.

I thought the whole world was like Lorain.

Freedom is choosing your responsibility. It's not having no responsibilitie s; it's choosing the ones you want.