I don't have any degrees. I went to Hunter College one year and New York University another year. It's just on the basis of my books that I've been hired at any of the places I've been.

Let us go forth with fear and courage and rage to save the world.

People will sometimes say, "Why don't you write more politics?" And I have to explain to them that writing the lives of women IS politics.

Write what will stop your breath if you don’t write.

Today's wars are about oil. But alternate energies exist now - solar, wind - for every important energy-using activity in our lives. The only human work that cannot be done without oil is war.

Sometimes you find that what is most personal is also what connects you most strongly with others.

Sometimes, walking with a friend, I forget the world.

Women should stick together. Didn’t you learn anything yet?

All that is really necessary for survival of the fittest, it seems, is an interest in life, good, bad or peculiar.

Literature, fiction, poetry, whatever, makes justice in the world. That's why it almost always has to be on the side of the underdog.

I lived in a house in the East Bronx, a totally Jewish neighborhood on East 172nd Street. You didn't see Christians much, although one lived next door. We thought they were kind of a minority.

as a childthere was eitherbooksorpain.i chose books.-how i became a writer

If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.

They ate my humanity but no humanity in beginning humans Earth dust atomsClever microorganisms defy godsBut defy nothingPhantom of truth Beneath reality's facade

A frenzy of activity that had mostly led him in circles: wasn't that a fairly accurate description of lust?

Selfless giving does not imply superiority. Selfless giving is about love.

There's so many characters they [studios] are not letting me play. And I thought, "Why don't you just go produce it yourself?".

Year's end still in straw hat and sandals

In Confession, Jesus welcomes us with all our sinfulness, to give us a new heart, capable of loving as he loves.

Black men should be with Black women. And they should love and honor them.

I'm always nervous before a job! I always think I'm going to be fired, I always think I can't do it. I always think I'm going to disappoint somebody, myself included.