All Important Things Are Hard.

There Is A Loneliness That Can Be Rocked. Arms Crossed, Knees Drawn Up, Holding, Holding On, This Motion, Unlike A Ship's, Smooths And Contains The Rocker. It's An Inside Kind--wrapped Tight Like Skin. Then There Is The Loneliness That Roams. No Rocking Can Hold It Down. It Is Alive. On Its Own. A Dry And Spreading Thing That Makes The Sound Of One's Own Feet Going Seem To Come From A Far-off Place.

...black Women Write Differently From White Women. This Is The Most Marked Difference Of All Those Combinations Of Black And White, Male And Female. It's Not So Much That Women Write Differently From Men, But That Black Women Write Differently From White Women. Black Men Don't Write Very Differently From White Men.

Like Friendship, Hatred Needed More Than Physical Intimacy; It Wanted Creativity And Hard Work To Sustain Itself

I'm Always Annoyed About Why Black People Have To Bear The Brunt Of Everybody Else's Contempt. If We Are Not Totally Understanding And Smiling, Suddenly We're Demons.

If We Had No Language We'd Have Nothing.