“I think Black people need to take self-esteem seriously.”

Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books.

The rage of the oppressed is never the same as the rage of the privileged.

Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.

The people I love, I’m committed to loving for the rest of my life.

What we cannot imagine cannot come into being.

No black woman writer in this culture can write “too much”. Indeed, no woman writer can write “too much”. No woman has ever written enough.

You can only realize change if you live simply. Once people want enormous excess, you can hardly do social change.

To love well is the task in all meaningful relationships, not just romantic bonds.

There is no life to be found in violence. Every act of violence brings us closer to death.

Justice demands integrity. It’s to have a moral universe – not only know what is right or wrong but to put things in perspective, weigh things. Justice is different from violence and retribution; it requires complex accounting.

When we choose to love, we choose to move against fear, against alienation and separation. The choice to love is a choice to connect, to find ourselves in the other.

To know love we have to invest time and commitment.

To know love we have to invest time and commitment.

Once you do away with the idea of people as fixed, static entities, then you see that people can change, and there is hope.

Honesty and openness is always the foundation of insightful dialogue.

Every terrorist regime in the world uses isolation to break people’s spirits.

Being black or white isn’t an accomplishment. What you do with your life – or what you accomplish with your life – dictates what you should be proud of.

I just wish all these young black kids would realize how significant it is to stop acting a fool out there, killing each other, not getting their education. You know, people have died to put us in a situation to be successful.

You know it’s going to hell when the best rapper out there is white and the best golfer is black.

I am black or white, I’ll never be grey in my life.

Having grown up in a segregated environment in the south I know what it’s like to be stepped on, I know what it’s like also to see some black hero do well in the face of adversity.

A lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies.

There is a terrific apprehension among some people that blacks will take over the sport… It will create problems because their behavior, speech and dress is just a completely different culture.

Seven out of 10 black faces you see on television are athletes. The black athlete carries the image of the black community. He carries the cross, in a way, until blacks make inroads in other dimensions.