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

I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer - its dust and lowering skies.

If you want to fly, you have to give up the things that weigh you down.

The function of freedom is to free someone else.

Don’t beg anybody for anything, especially love.

There is no such thing as race. None. There is just a human race - scientifically, anthropologically. Racism is a construct, a social construct... it has a social function, racism.

There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.

If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

In times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent.

All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.

Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge.

Keep trying! You will succeed at the sacred time.

The shorter and the plainer the better.

There is no theory. You merely have to listen. Pleasure is the law.

Your Grace," she said, "I have only one question. Do you wish this man crippled, or dead?

No man must be superior to the things that are common to men.... Not only are we all in the same boat, but we are all seasick.

Tell of his wondrous faithfulness, And sound his power abroad; Sing the sweet promise of his grace, And the performing God.

Grief had its own life, took its own sustenance.

I never refused my help to any person black or white; and I liked the office nonetheless because there were neither fees nor salary connected with it.

Life is a series of lessons that have to be understood.

Paradigms power perceptions, perceptions power emotions.