Like friendship, hatred needed more than physical intimacy; it wanted creativity and hard work to sustain itself

I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer - its dust and lowering skies.

If you want to fly, you have to give up the things that weigh you down.

The function of freedom is to free someone else.

Don’t beg anybody for anything, especially love.

There is no such thing as race. None. There is just a human race - scientifically, anthropologically. Racism is a construct, a social construct... it has a social function, racism.

There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.

If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

In times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent.

All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.

Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge.

Because they are ignorant and their parents are ignorant. Because they don’t know any better.

Live your everyday extraordinary!

Like spilled water, once a girl's reputation is ruined, it will never come back

For the perpetrator, rape lasts just a matter of minutes. For the victim, it never stops.

I don't think I ever sing the same way twice. The blues is sort of a mixed-up thing. You just have to feel it. Anything I do sing is part of my life.

I don't like being consumed by work all the time. I consume myself so much when I do a part that I like to step away from it.

If you do the little jobs well, the big ones will tend to take care of themselves.

Extreme seductiveness is at the boundary of horror

So much is made of good, strong roles for women. Actually, it's really interesting playing vul­nerable people as well.

Of all the diseases I have known, loneliness is the worst.