I've come to see that I'm saying something that people generally do not want to hear.

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.

Don't ever choose the people who don't matter over the ones that do.

Those rare individuals society labels geniuses are almost always freaks of nature and are naturally gifted rather than being diligent students who became geniuses because of their education.

Intimacy is not a happy medium. It is a way of being in which the tension between distance and closeness is dissolved and a new horizon appears. Intimacy is beyond fear.

When I put something into motion, the creativity starts to make other people want to jump in, and then a lot of people get employed. I'm just like a shark, in that way. If I stop swimming, I'll die.

The sense of pride I take away from doing something I know will be inspire women to feel confident about their bodies.

When it came time to find employment, I set my sights on becoming an engineer at a home electronics manufacturer, a field that was closely related to my major at university.

I always believed that I have something important to say and I said it.

If you start throwing hedgehogs under me, I shall throw a couple of porcupines under you.

Sickness is not just in the body, it could be in the mind, it could be in your intellect; it could be in the inhibitions of your intellect

He picked the postage stamp over the wall with aplomb.