I'm always surprised to hear or read my work described, "In angry tones, she says." No! In truthful tones! Does truth have a tone? I don't know.

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.

Once you connect with yourself, it is impossible to be lonely or desperate.

The happiness at getting what you want is not usually commensurate with the worry leading up to it.

All you have to do is be able to feel.

We haven't the time to take out time.

So when [Donald Trump] makes his address on the 40 days that he has been president, he has nothing to show for it but fear in every way.

I haven't any wisdom - just a child like everybody else. I'm not as great as Frank Lloyd Wright.

One of my beliefs very strongly is that any democracy depends on a free, healthy press.

So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong, and strike at what is weak.

I don't have children that I've lost in a bitter custody dispute. But I see an enormous wound in kids due to a lack of their dads.

The mad also laugh, or is that what Freud and the others discovered perhaps, that only the mad laugh?