I used to want to be a backup singer. Not a lead singer, because I really can't sing.

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.

You shouldn't judge someone until you've walk a mile through an underground tunnel in her uncomfortable shoes

I believe most people are small dreamers because they dream about great things, however, they think those great things are going to come to them when they wait

To abandon language is to stop/creating a place other than your own life/in which to live. It is to enter/the terrible certainty of the flesh. Even god/is only possible through language.

Alexia wondered what it said about her character that Ivy had genuinely believed she would intentionally go climbing about the side of a floating dirigible.

I feel like my 50 years at Harvard were an interlude. I'm really a New Yorker.

Even though we know sexual assault is still dramatically underreported, I think women are much more empowered today than they used to be.

Blasphemy has always seemed to require taking things very seriously.

I just try and do the best with every role I get to do. Hopefully the experience in itself is a good experience and people will want to work with me.

I think if I learned anything in graduate school, it was to not drool around other actors who would normally make you drool.

You've got a bit of a temper, don't you?