The thing about genius is it will never yield to circumstances. Genius regards what's given as the beginning of its need to find or devise something else.

Bisexuality means I am free and I am as likely to want to love a woman as I am likely to want to love a man, and what about that? Isn't that what freedom implies?

To tell the truth is to become beautiful, to begin to love yourself, value yourself. And that's political, in its most profound way.

Poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth.

Like a lot of Black women, I have always had to invent the power my freedom requires.

We do not deride the fears of prospering white America. A nation of violence and private property has every reason to dread the violated and the deprived.

Maybe the purpose of being here, wherever we are, is to increase the durability and occasions of love among and between peoples.

Overall, white men run America. From nuclear armaments to the filth and jeopardy of New York City subways to the cruel mismanagement of health care, is there anything to boast about?

Body and soul, Black America reveals the extreme questions of contemporary life, questions of freedom and identity: How can I be who I am?

To tell the truth is to become beautiful.

If you are free, you are not predictable and you are not controllable.

There's a cover for every pot, but I've never seen so many mismatched pots and covers in all my life. - Ellen Wasserfeldman, from Notes from Ellen Wasserfeldman by Alisa Dana Steinberg

Some of us fought back with guns and assassinations. Others fought back with a little hot dog stand on the corner.

The man who is most aggressive in teaching tolerance is the most intolerant of all: he wants a world full of people too timid and ashamed to really disagree with anything.

Every venture capitalist says at some point, 'I wish I could run this company myself' -- to be the entrepreneur instead of the investor.

I would climb on roofs and jump off using my parents' bed sheet, hoping it would open like a parachute. I was always getting hurt, breaking a leg, you know, bruising, cracking my head open.

We meet no Stranger, but Ourself.

I always wonder whether I'll get treated differently with a different accent.

It was all because of his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealinggreat-great-grandfather!

Vimes struggled to his feet, shook his head and set off after it. No thought was involved. It is the ancient instinct of terriers and policemen to chase anything that runs away.

Every thought and action of anyone affects everyone.