I'm a Southerner, born and bred, but that doesn't mean I approve of all that goes on here, and there are a lot of other white people who feel the same.

Baby, we have no choice of what color we're born or who our parents are or whether we're rich or poor. What we do have is some choice over what we make of our lives once we're here.

I do not know how old I was when the daydreams became more than that, and I decided to write them down, but by the time I entered high school, I was confident that I would one day be a writer.

These are things they need to hear, baby. It's their history.

We ain't never gonna lose this land.

She grabbed his arm. "Let it be, son!" she cried. "That child ain't hurt!" "Not hurt! You look into her eyes and tell me she ain't hurt!

No day in all my life had ever been as cruel as this one.

There were too many ears that listened for others besides themselves, and too many tongues that wagged to those they shouldn't.

We Logans don't have much to do with white folks. You know why? 'Cause white folks mean trouble.

So many things are possible as long as you don't know they are impossible.

Now one day, maybe I can forgive John Andersen for what he done to these trees, but I ain't gonna forget it. I figure forgiving is not letting something nag at you—rotting you out.

Knowledge is nothing without good attitude.

I will get the work done with or without pay.

You eat canned tuna fish and you absorb protein. Then, if you're lucky, someone give you Dover Sole and you experience nourishment. It's the same with books.

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

Mohammed was not an apparent failure. He was a dazzling success, politically as well as spiritually, and Islam went from strength to strength to strength.

When I wake to the gift of yet another sunrise my first thought is to rouse him and say, I owe you the sight of morning.

I don't drink or do any drugs. I never have and I never will. I don't need them. I'm a black woman from the land of the free, home of the brave, and I figure I don't need another illusion.

Writing makes a map, and there is something about a journey that begs to have its passage marked.

In raising a people from slavery to freedom, you have called them to act on a new theatre; and it is a necessary part of your business, to teach them how to perform their parts.

The guitar is a meditative tool to touch God and find love within yourself.