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

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.

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.

When I'm writing, I think about the garden, and when I'm in the garden I think about writing. I do a lot of writing by putting something in the ground.

Nobody is paying attention to the fact that first of all, a man has to build himself and become a personality

One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is that things are what they are and will be what they will be.

I've been called the journeyman. It's really more by default than it is by design.

Don't give me any money, don't give me any people, but give freedom, and I'll give you a movie that looks gigantic.

'Grandmother' doesn't mean that you have gray hair and you retire and stay home cooking cakes for your grandchildren.

God bless the Methodist Church - bless all the churches - and blessed be God, Who, in this our great trial, giveth us the churches.

I want to establish myself as the first Eric Davis, not the next Willie Mays.

Since when do corporations not have responsibility to the community? Since when to the not have responsibility to their employees?

The dominant party cannot reign forever, and truth and justice will prevail at last.

I don't recall getting a first guitar.