“Sometimes the magic of life is beyond thought. It's the sparkle of intuition, of bringing your own personal energy into your music.”

“And isn't love between two people better than hatred, in this world of violence and mourning? There seemed to me a fragile kindness in their love that survived through this poisonous war. Even thou...”

“...we spoke about dying. [Prim] told me how she'd nearly died of malaria. She said that she didn't mind the thought of death. That realizing you're going to die actually makes life better as it's o...”

“If we don't think about our death until we die, how can we decide how we want to live?”

“I took a deep breath of the syrupy sweetness of summer, suffused with bees and birds, and I thought to myself how beautiful this world can be. How lucky we are to be here, to be part of it, for how...”

“And I realized that this is what it's like to be an adult, learning to pick from a lot of bad choices and do the best you can with that dreadful compromise. Learning to smile, to put your best foot...”

“If you are not willing to stand up for anything or anybody, then why should the Creator take a single step to help you?”

“If I am to be fallen into love, I will. And if as a result I will appear to be stupid, disillusioned, and of poor judgment, I will. And I would be damned if I cared what other people think. For I w...”

“To be brave is to love someone unconditionally, without expecting anything in return. To just give. That takes courage, because we don't want to fall on our faces or leave ourselves open to hurt.”

“War is what happens when language fails.”

“Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.”

“The world is full enough of hurts and mischances without wars to multiply them.”

“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.”