“The secret to being a rider in the hippodrome wasn't just that you must be agile, or that you must be good with horses, or that you must be strong and steady as the horse careens to the far end of ...”

“Every now and then, you find a book that feels like it was keyed to your DNA.”

“You are never lost in sorrow, it seems to me, ever. You do know the way. In fact, you don't think there's any other. Sorrow seemed to me to be more like a road would through life, through the days ...”

“I could stand before him, be in his arms as I was just then, and still be lost to him, some phantom of a desire he cherished more than he cherished me, the woman he claimed to love.”

“And I would tell him, as we rise into the air, The curse is not that we cannot choose our Fates.The curse, the curse we all live under, is that we can.”

“I resented the idea of being talented. I couldnt respect it in my experience, no one else did. Being called talented at school had only made me a target for resentment. I wanted to work. Work, I c...”

“To create art with all the passion in one's soul is to live art with all the beauty in one's heart.”

“art is risk made visible”

“Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.”

“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.”

“A word mother, means a world to me.”

“Maa" The only word that holds power to give you strength when you are in pain.”

“STAINSWith red clay between my toes,and the sun setting over my head,the ghost of my mother blows in,riding on a honeysuckle breeze, oh lord,riding on a honeysuckle breeze.Her teeth, the keys of a ...”