“If there’s a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”

When a child walks in the room, your child or anybody else’s child, do your eyes light up? That’s what they’re looking for.

Make a difference about something other than yourselves.

The enemy is not men. The enemy is the concept of patriarchy, the concept of patriarchy as the way to run the world or do things.

Racism will disappear when it’s no longer profitable, and no longer psychologically useful. And when that happens, it’ll be gone. But at the moment, people make a lot of money off of it, pro and con.

He can’t value you more than you value yourself.

The best art is political and you ought to be able to make it unquestionably political and irrevocably beautiful at the same time.

Liberation means you don’t have to be silenced.

All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.

Perhaps that’s what all human relationships boiled down to: Would you save my life? or would you take it?

There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.

There is no civilization that did not begin with art, Whether it was drawing a line in the sand, painting a cave or dancing.

Black people have always been used as a buffer in this country between powers to prevent class war.

I dream a dream that dreams back at me.

Being able to laugh got me through.

What’s the world for you if you can’t make it up the way you want it?

I always know the ending; that’s where I start.

If you read a lot of books you are considered well read. But if you watch a lot of TV, you’re not considered well viewed.

The public library is more than a repository of books. It’s a mysterious, wondrous place with the power to change lives.

Books -where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables.

To create a market for your writing you have to be consistent, professional, a continuing writer – not just a one-article or a one-story or a one-book man.

I write books I’d enjoy reading, I’m the reader standing behind my shoulder.

One thing that makes me prefer people over books is shared laughter.

Every time you finish a book, you have a terrible feeling that there’s just never going to be another one. But fortunately, so far, the next one has always shown up.

The graveyard is the richest place on the surface of the earth because there you will see the books that were not published, ideas that were not harnessed, songs that were not sung, and drama pieces that were never acted.