I advocate that every woman be a part of a circle, and a circle that meets at least once a month, or if you can't do that, once every two months or every four months.

I know from having had a child, and from having been a child myself, that children will copy you.

My interest in creating anything is that it be useful.

You don't always have to be doing something. You can just be, and that's plenty.

We should not look down on our first ancestors.

Nobody has ever convinced me that race is real.

On a spiritual level, it's as though with my sighted eye I see what's before me, and with my unsighted eye I see what's hidden. It's illuminated life more than darkened it.

If you deny people their own voice, you'll have no idea of who they were.

I have a collective sense of suffering.

Some people are painters, and some are ballet dancers, and I'm a writer.

My parents were both storytellers. They always spoke with metaphorical richness.

'Fame' exhausts me.

I've always felt quite singular, even as a child. That I must stay on track to keep my purpose.

How long will it take the citizens of the United States, one wonders, to recognize that the house their country bombed in Iraq is the same one they were living in until it was foreclosed?

From infancy, I have relied on the fiercely sweet spirits of black men; and this is abundantly clear in my work.

I realized I was a country person - I'm just not used to small spaces.

We should learn to accept that change is truly the only thing that's going on always, and learn to ride with it and enjoy it.

I'm for women choosing whatever they want to do but they have to really know what they are doing.

I have never felt that the one thing that I am 'known for' is what I am.

As an elder of the Americas and of the rest of the planet, it is my responsibility to care for and protect, to the best of my ability, the young.

Fiction is such a world of freedom, it's wonderful. If you want someone to fly, they can fly.

Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.

Because you are alive, everything is possible.

What the mind doesn't understand, it worships or fears.