I've done lots of pieces on self-esteem and hair. There's a desire to conform, but if the encouragement to be yourself is there from loved ones, you'll find that later, that true self will come out.

My parents pressed upon me that "In this world, you are a black woman," so I was political about my hair and would not straighten it.

My mother's white, and she didn't know how to do my hair, so I had something that I always call white-mama hair.

There came a point when I wanted to do television, and I didn't think the Afro was going to play, so I made a very difficult choice - to straighten my hair.

Often hair is the way we are differentiated in this culture. To me the decision to straighten your hair is deeply political.

For black women our sense of ourselves is not always consistent with the way other people see us.

Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.

Having a job is being busy

Only your maker is aware of the purpose of your creation

And anyway, the anticipation was always worse than the thing itself - the anticipation and the memory, of course. And the anticipation of the memory was maybe the worst part of all.

To make the world. To make it again and again. To make it in the very maelstrom of its undoing.

I have always believed that good is only beauty put into practice.

I never really expected to win the hearts of the masses.

I started my music career at 18 and for a long while I let other people handle my affairs.

Acknowledge your good fortune by sharing it.

I became frustrated with myself for not being as sturdy and unquestioning as I knew a man in my position should be.