If you look back through history in the United States, there have been very few landslide elections. Half the country always voted for someone else.

I feel it's a responsibility for anyone who breaks through a certain ceiling... to send the elevator back down and give others a helpful lift.

Sometimes the person who is the most logical is the person whom we call insane.

Stay true to your brand and true to your voice and audiences will respond to that authenticity with enthusiasm and passion.

People have different reasons for the way they live their lives. You cannot put everyone's reasons in the same box.

The only thing worse than a loser is someone who won't admit he played badly.

You have to always be ready, always be alive, and always be willing to move in a new direction.

I find it sad that by not talking about who I sleep with, that makes me mysterious. There was a time when I would have been called a gentleman.

Mediocrity is the elephant in the room.

We're all victims of our own hubris at times.

I think you need the failures to get the success. You learn more from that.

You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.

When we lose one blessing, another is often most unexpectedly given in its place.

I don't often reread my own books, unless I am going into another in the series and need to refresh my mood when originating the concept

. . . no Black woman can become an intellectual without decolonizing her mind.

Just because your world is falling apart doesn't mean you have to fall apart. When everything seems crazy, you be calm. Don't let the outer chaos you are facing get inside of you.

A lady's hair is her crowning glory

Nobody should claim that the war [in Iraq] is over. But certainly it can be said that the regime is finished.

Whenever you get deja vu that means you're on the right path. I get it, like, more than ten times a year.

I think that someone is watching out for me, God, my guardian angel, I'm not sure who that is, but they really work hard.

Many people would no more think of entering journalism than the sewage business - which at least does us all some good.