What did it mean for a black woman to be an artist in our grandmothers' time? In our great-grandmothers' day? It is an answer cruel enough to stop the blood.

I have fallen in love with the imagination. And if you fall in love with the imagination, you understand that it is a free spirit. It will go anywhere, and it can do anything.

Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.

No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.

Look closely at the present you are constructing: it should look like the future you are dreaming.

Whenever you are creating beauty around you, you are restoring your own soul.

I don’t need a certain number of friends, just a number of friends I can be certain of.

Every small positive change we make in ourselves repays us in confidence in the future.

In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they're still beautiful.

'Thank you' is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding.

Just EnoughSoil for legsAxe for handsFlower for eyesBird for earsMushrooms for noseSmile for mouthSongs for lungsSweat for skinWind for mind

Never let a man stay the night. Dawn has a way of casting a pall on any night magic.

Leadership is the art of disappointing people at a rate they can stand.

We're not like robots. God promises to guide us through the Holy Spirit, but He gives us the freedom to make our own decisions.

I was molded, spent my time underneath a lot of goo. And then the bits and pieces were sculpted. It took probably 10 days to create each character after all those camera tests.

My work is like a dialogue between me and unseen powers, like alchemy.

We exist temporarily through what we take, but we live forever through what we give.

I spent my 20s working in patient care at a large university hospital, an experience that has informed all my work and has given me a lot of human observation to draw on.

If your kids are realizing that they descend from something, that's really great. The more you're able to inculcate that the greater amount of pride they're gonna have. That's incredible.

I was very happy that I was as normal as possible before I went into serious dance.