Soon, " he said in his letter. They said "soon" to each other often, and "soon" gave their plan the weight of something real.

Dear Non-American Black, when you make the choice to come to America, you become black. Stop arguing. Stop saying I'm Jamaican or I'm Ghanaian. America doesn't care.

There are many different ways to be poor in the world but increasingly there seems to be one single way to be rich.

Race doesn't really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don't have that choice.

Sometimes she worried that she was too happy. . . And her joy would become a restless thing, flapping its wings inside her, as though looking for an opening to fly away.

Ifemelu thought about the expression "sweet girl." Sweet girl meant that, for a long time, Don had molded Ranyinudo into a malleable shape, or that she had allowed him to think he had.

A book did not qualify as literature unless it had polysyllabic words and incomprehensible passages.

Ma? I think you have the spirit of husband-repelling. You are too hard, ma, you will not find a husband. But my pastor can destroy that spirit.

femelu could not understand this, her mother’s ability to tell herself stories about her reality that did not even resemble her reality

They never said “I don’t know.” They said, instead, “I’m not sure, ” which did not give any information but still suggested the possibility of knowledge.

...she thought of him as a person who did not have a normal spine, but had instead, a firm reed of goodness.

I could have been 23 next July I gambled on what mattered most, the dice were cast. I lost.

Tonight I'll be interviewing Ken Watanabe, Keisha Castle Hughes, Benecio Del Toro and Djimon Honsou - and yes, those are actors, not caterers.

Try to keep ourselves open, no matter how closed the world tries to make us sometimes.

Language is a tool adequate to provide any degree of precision relevant to a particular situation.

I've always been the type of person - you know, I kind of am extreme. So you know, I'm not, like, oh, let me get one tattoo. It's, like, my old whole arm has to be covered.

I think Pete Sampras has really reached his peak. About the only thing he doesn't do is cook.

If I didn't have that, fear and projections over what was coming next could have taken over. But it was tough. Don't think I was an angel. It was hell.

One should absorb the color of life.

I shop all the time, basically every day, whether it's online or in every city we go to.

Nature has no outline. Imagination has.