"Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean."

"This is the role of the mother. And in that visit I really saw clearly, for the first time, why a mother is really important. Not just because she feeds and also loves and also cuddles... but because in an interesting and and maybe an eerie and other worldly way, she stands in the gap. She stands between the unknown and the known."

"I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back."

"There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it."

"Nothing will work unless you do."

"The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned."

"Nothing can dim the light which shines from within."

"Eating is so intimate. It's very sensual. When you invite someone to sit at your table and you want to cook for them, you're inviting a person into your life."

"Politicians must set their aims for the high ground and according to our various leanings, Democratic, Republican, Independent, we will follow. Politicians must be told if they continue to sink into the mud of obscenity, they will proceed alone."

"I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best - I mean, when I'm at my best - of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music or in my poetry and prose, or I missed everything."

"As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them."

"Wouldn't take nothing for my journey now."

"I wrote some of the worst poetry west from the Mississippi River, but I wrote. And I finally sometimes got it right."

"The devil lives in our mistakes, the lord lives in our rights. Who lives in our ignorance, and who wins after all?"

"I don't trust people who don't love themselves and tell me, 'I love you.' ... There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt."

"Writing and cookery are just two different means of communication."

"Let's tell the truth to people. When people ask, 'How are you?' have the nerve sometimes to answer truthfully. You must know, however, that people will start avaoiding you because, they, too, have knees that pain them and heads that hurt and they don't want to know about yours. But think of it this way: If people avoid you, you will have more time to meditate and do fine research on a cure for whatever truly afflicts you."

"I sustain myself with the love of family."

"You have to develop ways so that you can take up for yourself, and then you take up for someone else. And so sooner or later, you have enough courage to really stand up for the human race and say, 'I'm a representative.'"

"I'm not a writer who teaches. I'm a teacher who writes."

"Once you appreciate one of your blessings, one of your senses, your sense of hearing, then you begin to respect the sense of seeing and touching and tasting, you learn to respect all the senses."

"Few, if any, survive their teens."

"Loving someone liberates the lover as well as the beloved. And that kind of love comes with age."

"It's the fire in my eyes, And the flash of my teeth, The swing in my waist, And the joy in my feet. I'm a woman Phenomenally."

"I know some people might think it odd - unworthy even - for me to have written a cookbook, but I make no apologies. The U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins thought I had demeaned myself by writing poetry for Hallmark Cards, but I am the people's poet so I write for the people."

"I believe that every person is born with talent."

"Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women."

"To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision."

"Nothing succeeds like success. Get a little success, and then just get a little more."

"The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart."

"I love wisdom. And you can never be great at anything unless you love it. Not be in love with it, but love the thing, admire the thing. And it seems that if you love the thing, and you don't just want to possess it, it will find you."

"You can only become great at that thing you're willing to sacrifice for."

"The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power.The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic admiration."

"I don't believe an accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers. It makes them siblings, gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition people have to work at."

"I believe we are still so innocent. The species are still so innocent that a person who is apt to be murdered believes that the murderer, just before he puts the final wrench on his throat, will have enough compassion to give him one sweet cup of water."

"It is this belief in a power larger than myself and other than myself which allows me to venture into the unknown and even the unknowable."

"I want all my senses engaged. Let me absorb the world's variety and uniqueness."

"If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die."

"I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry - writing at writing."

"Whining is not only graceless, but can be dangerous. It can alert a brute that a victim is in the neighborhood."

"Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet."

"We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty."

"Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness."

"If you're not angry, you're either a stone, or you're too sick to be angry. You should be angry. You must not be bitter. Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. It doesn't do anything to the object of its displeasure. So use that anger, yes. You write it. You paint it. You dance it. You march it. You vote it. You do everything about it. You talk it. Never stop talking it."

"Fighting for one's freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good Jew or a good Muslim or good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again."

"You may shoot me with your words,You may cut me with your eyes,You may kill me with your hatefulness,But still, like air, I'll rise."

"There were people who went to sleep last night, poor and rich and white and black, but they will never wake again. And those dead folks would give anything at all for just five minutes of this weather or ten minutes of plowing. So you watch yourself about complaining. What you're supposed to do when you don't like a thing is change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it."

"I believe that the most important single thing, beyond discipline and creativity is daring to dare."

"Won't it be wonderful when black history and native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history."

"Love. And again, see I don't mean, I think love is that condition in the human spirit so profund, that it allows us to forgive, and it may be the energy which keeps the stars in the firmament, I'm not sure. It may be the energy which keeps the blood running smoothly through our veins. I'm not sure, but it's something beyond the explanation. It can be used for anything you can explain. Any good thing you can explain."