I want affection and tenderness desperately, but there's something in me that prevents me from handing it out.

Basically there is no difference between whites and blacks, browns and yellows. I decided to think no more of people as Northerners and Southerners.

Whenever I played Columbus, Ohio, I dropped in to see my close friend, a medium who had mysterious powers. Her Indian guide was Mohawk.

We are all gifted. That is our inheritance.

We never had a bathtub. Mom would bathe me in the wooden or tin washtub in the kitchen, or in a big lard can.

I am somebody cause God don't make no junk

Many people know how to criticize, but few know how to praise.

Only those who are being burned know what fire is like.

Today or any day that phone may ring and bring good news.

There was one emotional outlet my people always had when they had the blues. That was singing.

All the men in my life have been two things: an epic and an epidemic.

alone doesn't mean lonely. It just means alone. It just means that for now, you're on your own, and that's not a terrible thing.

And I said, 'That last thing is what you can't get, Carlo. Nobody can get to that last thing. We keep on living in hopes of catching it once and for all.

Oh leave the Wise our measures to collate. One thing at least is certain, light has weight. One thing is certain and the rest debate. Light rays, when near the Sun, do not go straight.

I am a 'little messiah' walking on earth.

What man would dare believe that all he planned might come to pass?

Sameness leaves us in peace but it is contradiction that makes us productive.

Rowing harder doesn't help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction.

Unix is not so much an operating system as an oral history.

People see what they want to see.

To be in the mind and to be known are the same thing: in this domain esse est percipi.