“You can't own a human being. You can't lose what you don't own. Suppose you did own him. Could you really love somebody who was absolutely nobody without you? You really want somebody like that? So...”

“Dominion won by fear and secured by fear was still sweeter than any that could be got another way.”

“If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.”

“See? See what you can do? Never mind you cant tell one letter from another, never mind you born a slave, never mind you lose your name, never mind your daddy dead, never mind nothing. Here, this he...”

“Her passions were narrow but deep.”

“You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.”

“Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so?There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar.”

“Be wary of strong drink, it can make you shoot at the tax collector...and miss.”

“In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is Freedom, in water there is bacteria.”

“The seeking of a mate shall be undertaken with due preparation and care. A life-bond should never be contemplated as a light thing--unlike a legal union or sanctified joining, the sealing of souls ...”

“I dont have cookie-cutter relationships, Rumi. Women arent iPhone apps that I download and discard!”

“In advising the heads of state to learn from tragedy rather than perpetuate its existence Robert Kennedy excalimed, "Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live." ...”

“No black woman writer in this culture can write "too much". Indeed, no woman writer can write "too much"...No woman has ever written enough.”

“When you reduce a woman to writing, she makes you think of a thousand other women”

“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”