At the time I was taught to read, it was an Eden-like time of my life. My mother adored me. Everyone adored me. So I associate reading with enormous pleasure.

There's something to be said about a slightly plump person—you have just enough of too much.

The inevitable is no less a shock just because it is inevitable.

Express everything you like. No word can hurt you. None. No idea can hurt you. Not being able to express an idea or word will hurt you more. Like a bullet.

I was given a dictionary when I was seven, and I read it because I had nothing else to read. I read it the way you read a book.

People don't make changes because things are wonderful.

I would be lost without the feeling of antagonism that people have towards me. I write out of defiance.

People only say I’m angry because I’m black and I’m a woman.

A great piece of literature encompasses all that is and all that will be.

...yet a memory cannot be trusted, for so much of the experience of the past is determined by the experience of the present.

I'm so used to being misunderstood.

If you were mine, I'd never leave you, Prudence. I couldn't.

But artists didn't need to achieve "firsts", and Hughes wanted to be an artist.

What a ruler has to rely upon is only the human heart. Human hearts are to the ruler what roots are to a tree, what oil is to a lamp, water to fish, fields to a farmer, or money to a merchant.

I can't speak with authority about Emeka Anyaoku. I just didn't know him that well.

What is charm then? The free giving of a grace, the spending of something given by nature in her role of spendthrift ... something extra, superfluous, unnecessary, essentially a power thrown away.

Better to dream than to be.

There are many questions which fools can ask that wise men cannot answer.

There is probably no greater idler than myself. And I would consider myself a lazy-bones if I did not write so many volumes, and if I did not admire my diligence once I begin writing.

Get yourself out of whatever cage you find yourself in.

Those are ever the most ready to do justice to others, who feel that the world has done them justice.