White people are very good at acting like they're not racist. They deserve an Academy Award for that.

A new broom can sweep the floor, but an old broom knows where the dirt is.

People don't want to hear the truth, they never do. They wanna live in some kind of fantasy. And then when they get caught up in it, they start being in denial because they don't want to be wrong.

I have nothing to do with racism in America; it was here when I got here.

We have a lot of black Anglo-Saxons. Their skin is black, but their brain is white. When I get real mad at them, I call them graham crackers.

If your hair is relaxed, white people are relaxed. If your hair is nappy, they're not happy.

People in America worship money, and a white man's face on a green piece of paper does not make me wealthy. My health makes me wealthy. I used to work at a hospital, so I know the real deal.

Listen, we've got one little ol' black president, and white folks are upset, but they've had 43.

Handshaking means, 'I don't have a weapon.'

If you have money and you have fame, but you don't have any confidence in your blackness, then it's all for nothing.

You can't pick when you're touched. You can't pick the time. It just is. It's the reality. What it is, is. I can't change the past. I can only deal with the present and the future.

It is insanity to expect to live in peace when always we are getting ready for war.

Organizational culture is just like the “Operation System” of the organization, you need reboot periodically to keep it running smoothly.

Ah, poor Pole. It's been to much for her, this last bit. Turned her head, I shouldn't wonder. She's beginning to see things.

If you get a chance, take it. If it changes your life, let it. Nobody said it'd be easy, they just promised it would be worth it.

You should always remember that you were chosen to be on this earth.

A girl what's born for hangin' ain't likely to be drowned.

Literature is a form of permanent insurrection. Its mission is to arouse, to disturb, to alarm, to keep men in a constant state of dissatisfaction with themselves.

You look for one thing and you find another.

The odd thing is, that I wrote The Great Spring while I had cancer and it's not about cancer. It was after I was done with cancer that I wrote a book about it.

I love all the things there are, and of all fires love is the only inexhaustible one; and that's why I go from life to life.