The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.

It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.

There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.

The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.

It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate.

Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be

People can cry much easier than they can change.

Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.

Know from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go.

Even if you're in the thick of revising another work, write something new. Something small. It's important to keep telling yourself stories.

There was never law, or sect, or opinion did so much magnify goodness, as the Christian religion doth.

I was attracted to poetry, which is perhaps the purest of the art forms, where love is the medium of exchange and the nobility of love is considered. It's a land of higher ideals.

America doesn't have an abortion problem - it has an unwanted pregnancy problem, and an abortion symptom.

I try to photograph thoughts.

There's no work-life balance without making decisions and without courage.

I often wonder whether Negroes like myself who are pretty well known help out at all in breaking down barriers.

Making a living and making a life sometimes point in opposite directions.

Currently we don't have plans on conquering the world.

The first quality that is needed is audacity.