Every Black woman in America lives her life somewhere along a wide curve of ancient and unexpressed angers.

It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.

When I dare to be powerful - to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.

There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.

Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.

When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.

If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.

I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.

Tomorrow belongs to those of us who conceive of it as belonging to everyone; who lend the best of ourselves to it, and with joy.

I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.

If I cannot air this pain and alter it, I will surely die of it. That's the beginning of social protest.

I wonder if I should believe what she says. But when you're not strong in yourself, anyone can tell you anything and you'll fall for it.

'Let God be true but every man a liar' is the language of true faith.

I only want to do better work. That's the focus of my life.

Parla Come Mangi' --It is a common way to say 'be simple', 'don't try to be rhetorical' literaly: 'speak the way you eat

Being rewarded for anything other than the quality of their work is the fastest way to screw-up a writer-and it isn't only new ones who suffer from that.

Every article I see is dope this, junkie that, whiskey this - that ain't my title.

It is not enough, citizens, to have destroyed the factions, it is necessary now to repair the evil that they have done to the country.

In music, as I find myself forever saying, things don't get better or worse: they evolve and transform themselves.

When from a long distant past nothing subsists after the things are broken and scattered, the smell and taste of things remain.

The art of avoiding extremes is an art that is drawn on the canvas of maturity and painted with the abstract strokes of many experiences.