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Write at the edges of the day.

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Nobody loves the head of a dandelion. Maybe because they are so many, strong, and soon.

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No gasp at a miracle that is truly miraculous because the magic lies in the fact that you knew it was there for you all along.

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It's gonna hurt, now," said Amy. "anything dead coming back to life hurts.

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I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I never asked [James] Joyce not to mention Catholicism or the world of D...more

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Good for you. More it hurt more better it is. Can't nothing heal without pain, you know.

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You know, the kind who know Jesus by His first name, but out of politeness never use it even to His face.

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...maybe you think up North is way different from down South. Don't believe it and don't count on it. Custom is just as real as law and can be just as...more

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I laughed but before I could agree with the hairdressers that she was crazy, she said, 'What's the world for if you can't make it up the way you want ...more

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We women, me and you. Tell me something real. Don’t just say I’m grown and ought to know. I don’t. I’m fifty and I don’t know nothing. What about it? ...more

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Violet learned then what she had forgotten until this moment: that laughter is serious. More complicated, more serious than tears.

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Black women were armed, black women were dangerous and the less money they had the deadlier the weapon they chose.

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I don’t want to be a free nigger; I want to be a free man.”“Don’t we all. Look. Be what you want--- white or black. Choose. But if you choose black, y...more

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Nowadays silence is looked on as odd and most of my race has forgotten the beauty of meaning much by saying little. Now tongues work all day by themse...more

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Language, when it finally comes, has the vigor of a felon pardoned after twenty-one years on hold. Sudden, raw, stripped to its underwear.