To tell the truth is to become beautiful.

Bisexuality means I am free and I am as likely to want to love a woman as I am likely to want to love a man, and what about that? Isn't that what freedom implies?

To tell the truth is to become beautiful, to begin to love yourself, value yourself. And that's political, in its most profound way.

Poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth.

Like a lot of Black women, I have always had to invent the power my freedom requires.

We do not deride the fears of prospering white America. A nation of violence and private property has every reason to dread the violated and the deprived.

Maybe the purpose of being here, wherever we are, is to increase the durability and occasions of love among and between peoples.

Overall, white men run America. From nuclear armaments to the filth and jeopardy of New York City subways to the cruel mismanagement of health care, is there anything to boast about?

Body and soul, Black America reveals the extreme questions of contemporary life, questions of freedom and identity: How can I be who I am?

If you are free, you are not predictable and you are not controllable.

In the process of telling the truth about what you feel or what you see, each of us has to get in touch with himself or herself in a really deep, serious way.

I spread eggshells all over my room, so anyone who tries to get close when I sleep will know what they're walking on

Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men.

Don't ever, ever try to lie to the internet.

Better to assume the worst and be wrong than assume the best and be wrong.

When you're born in fire, smoke will never do.

The pain was her whole world now. Pain and fear.

Women are safer in perilous situations and emergencies than men, and might be still more so if they trusted themselves more confidingly to the chivalry of manhood.

I come from a family of fishermen. Fishing is very important to us. We don't hunt. We're not gun folk.

A Judge must bear in mind that when he tries a case he is himself on trial.

I bought a house in the Hollywood Hills and brought my grandmother from Harlem to live in it with me.