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

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.

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

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.

A woman with a voice is by definition a strong woman. But the search to find that voice can be remarkably difficult.

To undertake a genuine spiritual path is not to avoid difficulties but to learn the art of making mistakes wakefully, to bring them to the transformative power of our heart.

there is no independence and pertinacity of opinion like that of these seemingly soft, quiet creatures, whom it is so easy to silence, and so difficult to convince.

It is difficult to live without opium after having known it because it is difficult, after knowing opium, to take earth seriously. And unless one is a saint, it is difficult to live without taking earth seriously.

No matter how difficult the past, you can always begin again today.

At first I didn’t think I was going to fit into Barcelona’s way of playing. There was a lot of tiki-taka and I was thinking that without a lot of space to play in, I’d find it more difficult. I worried about that.

Believe you can, and you can. Belief is one of the most powerful of all problem dissolvers. When you believe that a difficulty can be overcome, you are more than halfway to victory over it already.

Learn to be difficult when it counts.