The sun, the hero of every day, the impersonal old man that beams as brightly on death as on birth, came up every morning.

I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background........Beside the waters of the Hudson" I feel my race. Among the thousand white persons, I am a dark rock surged upon, and overswept, but through it all, I remain myself. When covered by the waters, I am; and the ebb but reveals me again." How It Feels to Be Colored Me

Everybody has some special road of thought along which they travel when they are alone to themselves. And his road of thought is what makes every man what he is.

I belong to no race nor time. I am the eternal feminine with its string of beads.

Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the same horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men. Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.

If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.

Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to 'jump at the sun.' We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground.