We Must Be Warriors In The Struggle

Had I Not Had My Grandmother, Who Dared To Be My Rainbow In The Clouds, I Would Have Been Just Another Sexually Abused Barefoot Black Girl On The Roads Of Arkansas.

I Wasn't A Pretty Girl. I Was Six Feet Tall At 15, You Know.

...we May Encounter Many Defeats, But We Must Not Be Defeated. That Sounds Goody Two-shoes, I Know, But I Believe That A Diamond Is The Result Of Extreme Pressure And Time. Less Time Is Crystal. Less Than That Is Coal. Less Than That Is Fossilized Leaves. Less Than That It's Just Plain Dirt. In All My Work, In The Movies I Write, The Lyrics The Poetry, The Prose, The Essays, I Am Saying That We May Encounter Many Defeats - Maybe It's Imperative That We Encounter The Defeats - But We Are Much Stronger Than We Appear To Be And Maybe Much Better Than We Allow Ourselves To Be.

The Main Thing In One's Own Private World Is To Try To Laugh As Much As You Cry.

The Thing To Do, It Seems To Me, Is To Prepare Yourself So You Can Be A Rainbow In Somebody Else's Cloud. Somebody Who May Not Look Like You. May Not Call God The Same Name You Call God - If They Call God At All. I May Not Dance Your Dances Or Speak Your Language. But Be A Blessing To Somebody. That's What I Think.