Mama learned to laugh with them, before they could laugh at her, and to do it so well no one could be sure what she really thought or felt.

Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is that if we are not beautiful to each other, we cannot know beauty in any form.

Change, when it comes, cracks everything open.

Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies.

Fiction is a piece of truth that turns lies to meaning.

Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is the way you can both hate and love something you are not sure you understand.

I did not begin with craft, I began with strong feelings and worked toward craft.

Class, race, sexuality, gender and all other categories by which we categorize and dismiss each other need to be excavated from the inside.

One of the strengths I derive from my class background is that I am accustomed to contempt.

The only magic we have is what we make in ourselves, the muscles we build up on the inside, the sense of belief we create from nothing.

I have wanted everything as a writer and a woman, but most of all a world changed utterly by my revelations.

Mistakes? That's why they put erasers on pencils.

People who are in power make their arrangements in secret, largely as a way of maintaining and furthering that power.

The public is gullible. ... If [many satirists are] making the same joke, that's the danger. Then there's a solidifying effect and it becomes a truth.

It's an excellent movie. Really excellent.

You're just a bee charmer, Idgie Threadgoode. That's what you are, a bee charmer.

'The Elephant Man' was hugely enjoyable to do. I thought the one stage, when Chris Tucker did the first makeup and it took 12 hours, I thought they'd actually found a way for me not to enjoy filming.

Women don't get the credit they deserve.

I like parties, but I'm shy, and I often find myself standing around, feeling awkward.

One does not photograph something simply for 'what it is', but 'for what else it is.

Our religion teaches that anger is a great sin, even if it is "righteous".