My thick and full lips shall pout their African ancestry until all sorrows are kissed out of me.

There is a pleasure a bee takes in collecting nectar and piling it into a hive. It knows well that the chores involved in such a task will yield sweet results.

Then I saw his kind eyes, a comfort I desired. Then I saw his height, a knight I needed by my side. Then I saw his body, a man I surrendered to.

To eat Ugali is an art of adventure in itself. Forget cutlery because all you need is your lovely fingers.

I do not condemn either the rich or the poor, but the consequences of these two.

The joy of comradeship in this foreign land has been killed by silence and overprotection of personal space. I miss the chaos around me for it makes me realise that I am amidst life and alive.

Everyone these days is concerned so much with privacy and forgets the value of human touch. We still need each other but are scared of how it might sound or appear to the other.

May you grow to be a fearless and proud accepting-self human.

At times we are the worst racist enemies of our black selves.

If a lion can growl, why shouldn’t a man cry?

A foolish mind would not raise an eyebrow when things are done diff erently in a foreign culture. An educated mind would try to understand the meaning of it all.

The power of greatness lies within each of us.

Our culture has become so obsessed with celebrity that it’s easy to confuse fame with success. They are not the same thing.

When a man says money can do anything, that settles it: he hasn't got any.

Our father the novelist; my husband the poet. He belongs to the ages - just don't catch him at breakfast. Artists, celebrated for their humanity, they turn out to be scarcely human at all.

A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance. [The ability to focus on positives and distract your mind from negatives for at least a time is a necessary skill for being happy.]

There's no longevity in me telling old stories on the radio.

My goal was always getting my work out in the world, and in many ways, I feel like the luckiest person alive.

The upper 1 percent, the people down on Wall Street, the corporate executives, they're the people that control this economy.

That's happened a couple times: Billy Joel. It was just, "You sound like Billy Joel." And I get really upset about that. No offense to that guy, but it's not for me.

The more advertising I see, the less I want to buy.