My writing has always been met with derision or dismissal.

There's something to be said about a slightly plump person—you have just enough of too much.

The inevitable is no less a shock just because it is inevitable.

Express everything you like. No word can hurt you. None. No idea can hurt you. Not being able to express an idea or word will hurt you more. Like a bullet.

I was given a dictionary when I was seven, and I read it because I had nothing else to read. I read it the way you read a book.

People don't make changes because things are wonderful.

I would be lost without the feeling of antagonism that people have towards me. I write out of defiance.

People only say I’m angry because I’m black and I’m a woman.

A great piece of literature encompasses all that is and all that will be.

...yet a memory cannot be trusted, for so much of the experience of the past is determined by the experience of the present.

I'm so used to being misunderstood.

I was born anew, owner of my own darkness.

There is no standing still because time is moving forward.

Everybody knows we're big liberals and I was a very outspoken Hillary Clinton supporter, and I still am. It's impossible for us to separate the songs we're writing from what's going on in the world.

Luck generally comes to those who look for it, and my notion is that it taps, once in a lifetime, at everybody's door, but if industry does not open it luck goes away.

My favorite cast member of 'Scandal' is Josh Malina.

For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain.

Clapton asked my brother to play on his record. I thought that was the most wonderful thing in the world.

I think everyone always has time to suffer.

Powerful states can maintain themselves only by crime, little states are virtuous only by weakness.

Happiness is all about milking the "sacred now".