Light came to me when I realized that I did not have to consider any racial group as a whole. God made them duck by duck and that was the only way I could see them.

Mystery is the essence of divinity

A great state is a well-blended mash of something of all the people and all of none of the people. The liquor of statecraft is distilled from the mash you got.

Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the granddaughter of slaves. It fails to register depression with me.

Some people could look at a mud puddle and see an ocean with ships.

There is something about poverty that smells like death. Dead dreams dropping off the heart like leaves in a dry season and rotting around the feet; impulses smothered too long in the fetid air of underground caves. The soul lives in sickly air. People can be slaveships in shoes.

Women forget all the things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget.