The past is like the hair on our head. I moved to New York when I was twelve, but you always have this feeling that wherever you come from, you physically leave it, but it doesn't leave you.

All anyone can hope for is just a tiny bit of love, like a drop in a cup if you can get it, or a waterfall, a flood, if you can get that too.

Love is like the rain. It comes in a drizzle sometimes. Then it starts pouring and if you're not careful it will drown you.

Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously. ... Writing, knowing in part that no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them.

There is a frustration too, that at moments when there's not a coup, when there are not people in the streets, that the country disappears from people's consciousness.

When you write ,it's like braiding your hair. Taking a handful of coarse unruly strands and attempting to bring then unity.

It's not easy to start over in a new place,' he said. 'Exile is not for everyone. Someone has to stay behind, to receive the letters and greet family members when they come back.

People are just too hopeful, and sometimes hope is the biggest weapon of all to use against us. People will believe anything.

I think Haiti is a place that suffers so much from neglect that people only want to hear about it when it’s at its extreme. And that’s what they end up knowing about it.

Toni Cade Bambara said: “Writing is the way I participate in the struggle.”

Misery won't touch you gentle. It always leaves its thumbprints on you; sometimes it leaves them for others to see, sometimes for nobody but you to know of.

I may not believe in myself, but I believe in what I'm doing.

To the real artist in humanity, what are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all.

Dear friend, I have searched all nightthrough each burnt paper, but I fear I will never findthe formula to let you die

In America, we have a depleted military. It has to be helped, has to be fixed.

I actually don't mind rats at all. I kind of think they're quite cute, but that's just me.

No one can write perfect English and keep it up through a stretch of ten chapters. It has never been done.

Forget about shortcuts. Instead, enjoy the wonders of your path.

If you are in the same place today as you were yesterday, you are a backslider.

It kept him alive, he was certain; even more, it kept his darkest of his demons at bay.

Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death the memory be green.