I'm very aware that we make these decisions toward love or hate every day. I certainly don't have the stamina to live through each day making only the noblest decisions.

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.

Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.

You can want and want and want, but if he doesn't want you back ... you might as well wish the sky were red.

You can say battle or war or whatever, but in the end, it's music. It's not really violent in intent at all, it's really just about expression and celebrating that in itself.

How wicked, my brothers, innocent milk must always seem to me now.

The end is built into the beginning.

There were the fairy tales my father told to me at bedtime. All the standards. I thought my father invented wolves.

What is a good man? A teacher of a bad man. What is a bad man? A good man's charge?

When I was 13, I told Henry Winkler I wanted to act. He said, Do it and don't let anyone stand in your way. His validation just made it all the more true. I haven't stopped thanking him since.

I read about some movie where they did everything on blue screen, and the actors were not even connecting to each other.

Most criminologists today will acknowledge that crime rates and incarceration rates in the United States have had relatively little to do with each other.