“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.”

You are your own stories.

I don’t think one parent can raise a child. I don’t think two parents can raise a child. You really need the whole village.

But to find out the truth about how dreams die, one should never take the word of the dreamer.

He wants to put his story next to hers.

There is no such thing as race. None. There is just a human race – scientifically, anthropologically. Racism is a construct, a social construct, it has a social function, racism.

Like any artist without an art form, she became dangerous.

Misery don’t call ahead. That’s why you have to stay awake – otherwise it just walks on in your door.

Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.

At some point in life the world’s beauty becomes enough.

Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it, summon it, from even the most tragic of circumstances.

Beloved, you are my sister, you are my daughter, you are my face; you are me.

Passion is never enough; neither is skill.

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

If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, you must be the one to write it.

Freedom is choosing your responsibility. It’s not having no responsibilitie s; it’s choosing the ones you want.

Your life is already artful-waiting, just waiting, for you to make it art.

I used to get letters saying, ‘I didn’t know black children and white children were the same.’

How many thick black women are there singing whatever I’m singing, surrounded by rappers, but also from the suburbs? I can’t really judge someone else for judging me!

I performed in high school for Black History Month at a talent show, but besides that, I didn’t have the resources to perform so I spent my time as a teenager writing music.

War is mankind’s most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men.

It was an unwritten law that black comics were not permitted to work white nightclubs. You could sing and you could dance, but you couldn’t stand flat-footed and talk; that was a no-no.

I never thought I’d see the day that I would see white folks as frightened, or more so than black folks was during the civil rights movement when we were in Mississippi.

In the early days, we just wore black onstage. Very bold, my dear. Then we introduced white, for variety, and it simply grew and grew.

Abortion is black genocide, What happens to the mind of a person and the moral fabric of a nation that accepts the aborting of the life of a baby without a pang of conscience?