“All important things are hard.”

Beauty was not simply something to behold; it was something one could do.

Black people’s music is in a class by itself and always has been.

I think some aspects of writing can be taught. Obviously, you can’t teach vision or talent. But you can help with comfort.

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

The function of freedom is to free someone else.

A sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves – a special kind of double.

It was a fine cry – loud and long – but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.

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

What a woman. What a life.

A writer’s life and work are not a gift to mankind; they are its necessity.

In times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent. This is precisely the time when artists go to work.

Something that is loved is never lost.

You don’t have to love me but you damn well have to respect me.

Anger is better. There is a sense of being in anger. A reality and presence. An awareness of worth. It is a lovely surging.

I didn’t fall in love, I rose in it.

If you can only be tall because someone else is on their knees, then you have a serious problem. And white people have a very, very serious problem.

I try to treat all the money I’m making like it’s the last time I’m going to make it.

If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.

There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.

I worked so hard for all this shit.

Living life in style also means living a life of balance.

Focus on where you are going, not where you are.

We should be building great things that don’t exist.

Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.