“Love is never any better than the lover.”

If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.

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.

The lover only gets what is offered not a shred more.

You gotta fall in love with your reality.

The sun will stand as your best man And whistle When you have found the courage To marry forgiveness When you have found the courage to marry Love.

Love has three kinds of origin, namely: suffering, friendship and love. A human love has a corporal and intellectual origin.

Remind yourself every day how worthy you are of your own love.

Love is simply creation’s greatest joy.

Some photographers take reality and impose the domination of their own thought and spirit. Others come before reality more tenderly and a photograph to them is an instrument of love and revelation.

God gives us love! Something to love He lends us; but when love is grown To ripeness, that on which it throve Falls off, and love is left alone: This is the curse of time.