Beauty was not simply something to behold; it was something one could do.
Nobody loves the head of a dandelion. Maybe because they are so many, strong, and soon.
All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allow
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.
That anybody white could take your whole self for anything that came to mind. Not just work, kill, or maim you, but dirty you so bad you forgot who you were and couldn't think it up. And though she an...
All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in., March 9, 1998]
All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in.
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 Dublin. Never. And I don't know why I should be ask...
It's gonna hurt, now," said Amy. "anything dead coming back to life hurts.
Write at the edges of the day.
Black women were armed, black women were dangerous and the less money they had the deadlier the weapon they chose.
When I first seed Cholly, I want you to know it was like all the bits of color from that time down home when all us chil'ren went berry picking after a funeral and I put some in the pocket of my Sunda...
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 it?' 'The way I want it?' 'Yeah. The way you want...
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 dangerous.
I like marriage. The idea.
This soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear, and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no ri...
Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love a free man is never safe.
Naturally all of them had a sad story: too much notice, not enough, or the worst kind. Some tale about dragon daddies and false-hearted men, or mean mamas and friends who did them wrong. Each story ha...
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 themselves with no help from the mind.
She left me the way people leave a hotel room. A hotel room is a place to be when you are doing something else. Of itself it is of no consequence to one's major scheme. A hotel room is convenient. But...