Usually she ordered a cup of coffee and a cup of tea, as well as a brownie, propping up her sadness with chocolate and caffeine so that it became an anxiety.

This is what happened in love. One of you cried a lot and then both of you grew sarcastic.

She was afraid, and the afraid, she realized, sought opportunities for bravery in love.

She knew there were only small joys in life--the big ones were too complicated to be joys when you got all through--and once you realized that, it took a lot of the pressure off.

So I needed to be womanised. I was losing my sheen.

She wore a lot of gray-green corduroy. She had been under the impression that it brought out her eyes, those shy stars.

The turkeys I eat are raised on farms. They're different. They've signed on the dotted line.

But it would be like going to Heaven and not finding any of your friends there. Her life would go all beatific and empty in the eyes.

Mave believed that not being able to see your life clearly, to scrutinize it intelligently, meant that probably you were at the dead center of it, and that couldn't possibly be a bad thing.

I don't have a love life. I have a like life.'Mamie smiled. She thought how nice that might be, to be peacefully free from love...

It was strange, this toxic little vein, strange to stand above it, looking down at night, in a dangerous neighborhood, as if they were in love and entitled to such adventures.

Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point. French. Pascal. The heart has its reasons, whereof reason knows nothing.

A rumor is usually a lie that the media can legally profit from.

Simplicity clarity singleness: these are the attributes that give our lives power and vividness and joy.

Having a birthday around the holidays was never easy and, with every successive year, it felt more and more as if celebrating my birthday got thrown into the December holiday mix as an afterthought.

The only thing you got in this world is what you can sell. And the funny thing is that you're a salesman, and you don't know that.

In all my novels, I deal with the many problems and prejudices which exist for Black people in Britain today.

Peace doesn't mean you won't have problems. It's means problems won't have you.

I was never bored because I always had a book. So I had a doorway into another world or another universe. It was great.

Use the talents God has given you to make the world better for your having been in it.

Paintings have a life of their own that derives from the painter's soul.