“Happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. There was no third alternative.”

“You are afraid of it because it is stronger than you you hate it because you are afraid of it you love it because you cannot subdue it to your will. Only the unsubduable can be loved.”

“A man is like a novel: until the very last page you don't know how it will end. Otherwise it wouldn't even be worth reading.”

“I'm like a machine being run over its RPM limit: The bearings are overheating - a minute longer, and the metal is going to melt and start dripping and that'll be the end of everything. I need a qui...”

“The only means of ridding man of crime is ridding him of freedom.”

“knowledge, absolutely sure of its infallibility, is faith”

“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.”