When you see yourself quoted in print and you’re sorry you said it, it suddenly becomes a misquotation.

Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it.

Equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance at being incompetent.

Competence, like truth, beauty, and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder.

Don't believe in miracles - depend on them.

An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today.

Every girl should use what Mother Nature gave her before Father Time takes it away.

When in doubt or danger, run in circles, scream and shout.

A man doesn't know what he knows until he knows what he doesn't know.

There are two kinds of failures: those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought

Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.

I have always been loved and hated for the same reason and by the same people.

Never allow your own sorrow to absorb you, but seek out another to console, and you will find consolation.

It is important to always love what you do and do what you love. This is my mentality towards my career and my personal life.

Long Division has a lot of Afrosurrealist impulses. I think the book was more Afrofuturist when it was like 700 pages.

...there is no tool for development more effective than the empowerment of women.

Oh, the shark has pretty teeth, dear, And he shows them pearly white. Just a jackknife has Macheath, dear, And he keeps them out of sight.

It's such a profound alienation for a person not to be at home in their own body.

I remember going to see Amiri Baraka. It wasn't actually too long before he died. He said, "You've got to write to change the world!" I was like, "Not me, no, no, no, no."

Every morning is like a new reincarnation into this world. Let us take it then for what it is and live each moment anew.

The American constitutions were to liberty, what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech, and practically construct them into syntax