At some point in life the world’s beauty becomes enough. You don’t need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough.
As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think.
There is really nothing more to say-except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how.
The peace I am thinking of is the dance of an open mind when it engages another equally open one.
Don’t ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn’t fall in love, I rose in it.
A sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves – a special kind of double.
Passion is never enough; neither is skill.
I couldn’t bear to have people mispronounce my name. But the person I was was this person who was called Chloe.
I don’t think a female running a house is a problem, a broken family. It’s perceived as one because of the notion that a head is a man.
I get angry about things, then go on and work.
I guess I’m depressed. I don’t know. I can’t explain it. Part of it is the irritability of being 84, and part of it is being not as physically strong as I once was. And part of it is my misunderstanding, I think, of what’s going on in the world.
I want to discourage you from choosing anything or making any decision simply because it is safe. Things of value seldom are.
Make a difference about something other than yourselves.
I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge-even wisdom. Like art.
Anything dead coming back to life hurts.
The pieces I am, she gather them and gave them back to me in all the right order.
It was my father who could do no wrong. So I didn’t think of it as, oh, look, my father’s a violent man.
I don’t know whether the bird you are holding is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands. It is in your hands.
She learned the intricacy of loneliness: the horror of color, the roar of soundlessness and the menace of familiar objects lying still.
There is an incredible amount of magic and feistiness in black men that nobody has been able to wipe out. But everybody has tried.