You need intelligence, and you need to look. You need a gaze, a wide gaze, penetrating and roving - thats what's useful for art.

I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer - its dust and lowering skies.

If you want to fly, you have to give up the things that weigh you down.

The function of freedom is to free someone else.

Don’t beg anybody for anything, especially love.

There is no such thing as race. None. There is just a human race - scientifically, anthropologically. Racism is a construct, a social construct... it has a social function, racism.

There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.

If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

In times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent.

All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.

Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge.

Who in their infinite wisdom decreed that Little League uniforms be white? Certainly not a mother.

Because she is too ugly to kiss goodbye.

You know, this is what I've always thought a college should look like.

It has ever been since time began, and ever will be, till time lose breath, that love is a mood - no more - to man, and love to a woman is life or death.

Schools learned long ago that the way to keep children from thinking is to keep them busy.

It ain't enough to get the breaks. You gotta know how to use 'em.

Painting to me is constant searching. I can see what I want, but I can't get there, and yet you have to be open enough that if it goes another way, then let it go that way.

My employer uses twenty-six years of my life for every year I get to keep. And what do I get in return for the enormous thing I am giving? What do I get in return for my life?

My hard work and excellent training entitled me to be a better actress than some of my competitors

I'm not really interested in anyone's record or anyone - I'm always fighting with myself. I always try to do my best.