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

I didn’t fall in love, I rose in it.

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.

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.

Knowledge of the natural world and how it works should be counted as fundamental to informed governance. You can’t have a functioning democracy, if the electorate is under-informed or, worse, mis-informed.

A young man passes from our public schools to the universities, ignorant almost of the elements of every branch of useful knowledge.

It is God who is the ultimate reason things, and the Knowledge of God is no less the beginning of science than his essence and will are the beginning of things.

Through knowledge we behold the world’s creation, How in his cradle first he fostered was; And judge of Nature’s cunning operation, How things she formed of a formless mass.

Insight must precede application.

Knowledge talks, wisdom listens.

You know, I have seven children, so I guess I know some things about life.

Go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine, or to the bamboo if you want to learn about the bamboo. And in doing so, you must leave your subjective preoccupation with yourself. Otherwise you impose yourself on the object and you do not learn.