For me, the person I was becoming when we left was erased, and another one was created.

Tell me who you walk with, and I'll tell you who you are.

if you don't exist in the arts of a culture, you're invisible. The arts are what express the soul of who we are and that expresses our humanity.

How can you know what you're capable of if you don't embrace the unkown?

People think [immigration] is only about the dollar, but it's so much more complex. This is a place where you can reinvent yourself. I don't know that you can do that anywhere else.

What doesn't kill you, makes you fat.

We're always going to have prejudices ... I don't think we can change society. You can only change individual by individual. And you can change yourself.

In the twenty-one years I lived with my mother, we moved at least twenty times.

I dressed to their murmurs in the other room, their voices soft but strained, and I wondered if men ever talked like this, if their sorrows ever spilled into these secret cadences.

I would just as soon remain jamona than shed that many tears over a man.

Reaffirm your love for one another and let grow.

I've learnt not to draw my sword first to strike. That in no way portends I have the most feeble of minds or might . . . Probably, I'm waiting for the perfect moment to startle with a fatal strike.

There's no such thing as a limited victory. Every victory leaves another resentment, another defeated and humiliated people. Another place to guard and defend and fear.

My mother was an elementary school teacher for 35 years and taught at the Nixon School in New Jersey. I was raised as a very liberal Democrat, and she was protesting Nixon when he was in office.

I'm big on being positive. I'm generally so positive and happy. I just always felt that I was exactly where I wanted to be. And things have continued to go in great directions.

A great catch is like watching girls go by. The last one you see is always the prettiest.

Men like to pleasure us, girl. They like to undo our plaits and give us water to drink from their own mouths. That's what makes the world go round.

It is the white man who creates the Negro. But it is the negro who creates negritude.

You might as well take a chance on doing what you love.

I feel quite confident there will never be a plane on the face of the Earth with my name on it.