“She starched and ironed her face, forming it into just what people wanted to see.”

There are years that ask questions and years that answer.

It was funny if you looked at it right quick, but it got pitiful if you thought about it awhile.

The spirit of the marriage left the bedroom and took to living in the parlor.

Grown people know that they do not always know the way of things, and even if they think they know, they do not know where and how they got the proof.

My head was full of misty fumes of doubt.

Those that don’t got it, can’t show it. Those that got it, can’t hide it.

I made up my mind to keep my feelings to myself since they did not seem to matter to anyone else but me.

Bitterness is the coward’s revenge on the world for having been hurt.

If you kin see de light at daybreak, you don’t keer if you die at dusk. It’s so many people never seen de light at all.

I will fight for my country, but I will not lie for her.

And I can’t die easy thinking maybe the menfolks white or black is making a spit cup out of you. Have some sympathy for me. Put me down easy, Janie, I’m a cracked plate.

People can be slave ships in shoes.

Honey, de white man is de ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tuh find out. Maybe it’s some place way off in de ocean where de black man is in power, but we don’t know nothin’ but what we see.

She didn’t read books so she didn’t know that she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop.

An envious heart makes a treacherous ear. They done ‘heard’ bout you just what they hope done happened.

Night came walking through Egypt swishing her black dress.

People always try to earn money but never try to earn love.  

Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe.

Do something that even after you die, people smile for you.

What happens when people open their hearts? They get better.

Nothing can bring change faster than being around people who are achieving big things.  

It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves – in finding themselves.

Matter flows from place to place, and momentarily comes together to be you. Some people find that thought disturbing; I find the reality thrilling.

As a black woman, my politics and political affiliation are bound up with and flow from participation in my people’s struggle for liberation, and with the fight of oppressed people all over the world against American imperialism.