“When a black girl dies; the last thing to decompose is her heart.”

If home is where the heart is, then I don’t know where to go.

As you buy tampons you will be hit with the realization that you’re still paying in blood.

She spends an eternity as shelter for men who curse her when the storm passes.

Alone is the safest I have ever felt.

These hands keep a score of everything.

I poured myself from an empty cup but you weren’t even thirsty.

Brown girls are not band aids for your pain.

I am just a bunch of bad decisions glued together.

You look most like your father when you smile. It’s your ultimate betrayal.

You are a multiple choice exam and I have circled all the wrong answers.

Heaven is not something you need to die to get to.

Black don’t crack: It does bruise, though. It does rupture into a new sky.

I wish I was as good at love as I am at falling apart.

I am always becoming a new tragedy. Trading one torture for another. Forever versatile in this becoming.

Shame is what happens when you learn self love through people who are difficult to forgive.

Sometimes I open my mouth and my mother comes out.

There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.

To be black was to be the beneficiary of a great inheritance, a special destiny, glorious burdens that only we were strong enough to bear.

People will never, ever forget what happened and how it happened, and it is my hope that we are on our way to greater change.

It doesn’t matter how long my hair is or what colour my skin is or whether I’m a woman or a man.

Too many of us still believe our differences define us.

I have spent over half my life teaching love and brotherhood, and I feel that it is better to continue to try to teach or live equality and love than it would be to have hatred or prejudice.

People can tell you to keep your mouth shut, but that doesn’t stop you from having your own opinion.

You should always own a black dress because no one ever remembers a black dress.