“Make a difference about something other than yourselves.”

Black boys became criminalized. I was in constant dread for their lives, because they were targets everywhere. They still are.

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

All important things are hard.

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.

Instead of calling everybody names, start being more understanding.

Mind is never a problem. Mindset is.

Don’t call a girl a flirt, she’s just trying to be nice. Don’t call a girl obsessed when she’s just in love.

Never say you cannot afford something. That is a poor man’s attitude. Ask HOW to afford it.

But trying to be genuine was harder than it seemed.

Nobody who’s really using his ego, his real ego, has any time for any goddam hobbies.

I say what I think and I think what I say.

Haters call me bitch, call me faggot, call me whitey, but I am something you could never be.