“My theory is that the world is a difficult place to live in and distraction is the name of the game.”

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.

Navigating a white male world was not threatening. It wasn’t even interesting. I was more interesting than they were.

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.

It is difficult for men in high office to avoid the malady of self-delusion. They are always surrounded by worshipers. They are constantly, and for the most part sincerely, assured of their greatness.

It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.

Bringing out your vulnerable side and shedding your privacy in front of complete strangers is so very difficult, but when you are into the performance, the relief and release is so extraordinary that you get addicted.

Jesus was a bachelor and never lived with a woman. Surely living with a woman is one of the most difficult things a man has to do, and he never did it.

I’m a trained engineer, so I’m conditioned to come up with a right answer to a difficult question, but when it comes to art, there is no definite answer because it’s so subjective.

I’m trained to difficulties; difficulties can’t be eliminated from life.

The future doesn’t frighten me, even if it threatens to be full of other difficulties.

Until teachers get their due it is difficult to bring about a change.