“From my point of view, your life is already a miracle of chance waiting for you to shape its destiny.”

Black people have always been used as a buffer in this country between powers to prevent class war.

I dream a dream that dreams back at me.

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

Being able to laugh got me through.

What’s the world for you if you can’t make it up the way you want it?

I always know the ending; that’s where I start.

Literature, it seems to me, is wisdom.

The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.

A dream is just a nightmare with lipstick.

Today is always here,’ said Sethe. ‘Tomorrow, never.

You have to be a little tough, and rely on yourself. And tell people ‘No’.

To get to a place where you could love anything you chose – not to need permission for desire – well now that was freedom.

We mistook violence for passion, indolence for leisure, and thought recklessness was freedom.

You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.

A friend gathers all the pieces and gives them back in the right order.

If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.

It’s the combination of improbability with an independently given pattern that discredits chance.

Take a chance! All life is a chance

Take a chance! All life is a chance. The man who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare.

Life’s not about sitting at home in front of the TV waiting for your life to begin. Get out there and take some chances.

Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person a potential activist, every minute a chance to change the world.

So often, you don’t get that opportunity. You only go over everything once and, the next thing you know, you’re on set.

Either our wills are determined by prior causes and we are not responsible for them, or they are the product of chance and we are not responsible for them.

Gotta take a risk, take a chance, make a change, and break away. I won’t forget the place I came from.