I began to be a woman at twelve, or more properly, a genius.

When I was three years old I was taken with my family to a little town in Western Minnesota, where I lived a more or less vapid and ordinary life until I was ten.

I do not see any beauty in self-restraint.

The world is like a little marsh filled with mint and white hawthorn.

Fame is indeed beautiful and benign and gentle and satisfying, but happiness is something at once tender and brilliant beyond all things.

I am lithe, but fragile from constant involuntary self-analysis.

Genius of a kind has always been with me; an empty heart that has taken on a certain wooden quality; an excellent, strong woman's body and a pitiably starved soul.

A genius who does not know that he is a genius is no genius.

I do not sing nor play, but I adore music, particularly Chopin. I like him because I cannot understand him.

One must always say things that aim to interest, because in the world one must after all pay for one's keep.

I read of the Kalamazoo girl who killed herself after reading the book. I am not at all surprised. She lived in Kalamazoo, for one thing, and then she read the book.

Success is a little like wrestling a gorilla. You don't quit when you're tired. You quit when the gorilla is tired.

Hip-hop is a reflection of your surroundings and an instrument of change. - Esme from Sister Mischief

If one wishes to elicit a reaction from the elusive species known as 'reservus quietgirlius, ' one must poke.

I pray to give thanks and to recognize all the good things that are in my life even during times of great change, confusion, or frustration.

Life is given only once, and one wants to live it boldly, with full conscious and beauty.

White folks are not going to come to see a bunch of guys with tattoos, with cornrows. I'm sorry, but anyone who thinks different, they're stupid.

What's yours is mine and what's mine is my own.

Few men are born brave. Many become so through training and force of discipline.

If you want to change the world right now, it’s not so much a secret how you do it. You put the secrets of a criminal government on the Internet.

I felt no passion, no jealousy, no nostalgia. I was hollow, clear-headed, clean, and as emotionless as an aluminum pot.