Live not for Battles Won. Live not for The-End-of-the-Song. Live in the along.

Do not desire to fit in. Desire to oblige yourselves to lead.

We don't ask a flower any special reason for its existence. We just look at it and are able to accept it as being something different from ourselves.

I believe we should all know each other, we human carriers of so many pleasurable differences. To not know is to doubt, to shrink from, sidestep or destroy.

Reading is important - read between the lines. Don't swallow everything.

We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.

Don't let anyone call you a minority if you're black or Hispanic or belong to some other ethnic group. You're not less than anybody else.

I think there are things for all of us to do as long as we're here and we're healthy.

Books are meat and medicine and flame and flight and flower steel, stitch, cloud and clout, and drumbeats on the air.

Truth-tellers are not always palatable. There is a preference for candy bars.

Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies. And be it gash or gold it will not come again in this identical guise.

Advice is a form of Nostalgia

...what good would it do toshutter your windows, neverdream of rainbows or find hopein promises? Why choose to walk awayrather than hold your groundand fight for love?

I also don't turn into a bat or sparkle in the sun. Hollywood's portrayal of vampires is almost as accurate as its portrayal of prostitution in Pretty Woman.

Ella!" the voice yells, but I cannot tell where it is coming from. The sound wraps around me, spreading like spilt water and then evaporating into silence.

Every time Nyx thought she’d gotten out of the business of killing boys, she shot another one.

Effective thinking consists of being able to arrive at the truth; truth being defined as that which exists.

It's good to know where you've come from.

I have never known stage-fright at any time.

Many people live in a self-imposed prison and don't even know it.

[Advice to Bessie Smith:] Let your soul do the singin'.