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

Love is never any better than the lover.

You free. Nothing and nobody is obliged to save you but you.

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

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

She learned the intricacy of loneliness: the horror of color, the roar of soundlessness and the menace of familiar objects lying still.

You are your best thing.

I didn’t want to speak for black people. I wanted to speak to and to be among. It’s us.

I’ve spent my entire writing life trying to make sure that the white gaze was not the dominant one in any of my books.

Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.

Lonely was much better than alone.

Anything dead coming back to life hurts.

I type in one place, but I write all over the house.

There is an incredible amount of magic and feistiness in black men that nobody has been able to wipe out. But everybody has tried.

Writing is really a way of thinking–not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic or just sweet.

There is really nothing more to say-except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how.

I get angry about things, then go on and work.

Education is all a matter of building bridges.

He who graduates the harshest school, succeeds.

Success, remember is the reward of toil.

Still hope leads men to venture; and no one ever yet put himself in peril without the inward conviction that he would succeed in his design.

The way to be successful in Hollywood is to be as obnoxious as the next guy.

Men’s best successes come after their disappointments.

Few things are brought to a successful issue by impetuous desire, but most by calm and prudent forethought.

IT don’t matter if you win by an inch or a milewinning is winning!!