“Do I remain a revolutionary? Intellectually — without a doubt. But am I prepared to give my body to the struggle or even my comforts? This is what I puzzle about.”

Obviously the most oppressed of any oppressed group will be its women

Big Walter used to say, he’d get right wet in the eyes sometimes, lean his head back with the water standing in his eyes and say, ‘Seem like God didn’t see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams – but He did give us children to make them dreams seem worth while.’

Ah, I like the look of packing crates! A household in preparation for a journey! … Something full of the flow of life, do you understand? Movement, progress…

I want to fly! I want to touch the sun!” “Finish your eggs first.

Sometimes, I can see the future stretched out in front of me – just as plain as day. The future hanging over there at the edge of my days. Just waiting for me.

I think that the human race does command its own destiny and that that destiny can eventually embrace the stars.

I was born black and female.

One cannot live with sighted eyes and feeling heart and not know and read of the miseries which affect the world.

Children see things very well sometimes and idealists even better.

What you ain’t never understood is that I ain’t got nothing, don’t own nothing, ain’t never really wanted nothing that wasn’t for you. There ain’t nothing as precious to me…There ain’t nothing worth holding on to, money, dreams, nothing else–

There may be women to emerge who will be able to formulate a new and possible concept that homosexual persecution and condemnation has at its roots not only social ignorance, but a philosophically active anti-feminist dogma.

A woman who is willing to be herself and pursue her own potential runs not so much the risk of loneliness, as the challenge of exposure to more interesting men – and people in general.

Everybody talking ’bout heaven ain’t going there!

The grim possibility is that she who ‘hides her brains’ will, more than likely, end up with a mate who is only equal to a woman with ‘hidden brains’ or none at all.

Mama – Mama – I want so many things… I want so many things that they are driving me kind of crazy.

It is difficult for the American mind to adjust to the realization that the Rhetts and the Scarletts were as much monsters as the keepers of Buchenwald-they just dressed more attractively.

Almost the moment he died, they put him in Playboy as one of the greatest drummers, which he was – there’s no doubt about it. There’s never been anybody since. He’s one of the greatest drummers that ever lived.

So don’t be afraid – you were meant to rise above your ceiling of doubt.

I don’t have any doubt in my mind: I could knock out any man in the heavyweight division.

To say that the universe was here last year, or millions of years ago, does not explain its origin. This is still a mystery. As to the question of the origin of things, man can only wonder and doubt and guess.

The world is made up for the most part of morons and natural tyrants, sure of themselves, strong in their own opinions, never doubting anything.

In terms of the romantic kind of lead, I just never enjoy those movies very much. Maybe they’ll come to interest me more as I get older. I doubt it, but maybe. Romantic comedies tend to be, for me, an oxymoron.

An agnostic is a doubter. The word is generally applied to those who doubt the verity of accepted religious creeds of faiths.

It’s kind of a rule of thumb for me to self-doubt going into any kind of project. I always think that I shouldn’t be doing it and I don’t know how to do it and I’m going to fail and that I fooled them. I always try to find a way out.