“In secret we met -In silence I grieve,That thy heart could forget,Thy spirit deceive.If I should meet theeAfter long years,How should I greet thee? -With silence and tears”

“The great object of life is sensation- to feel that we exist, even though in pain.”

“Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.”

“I have a great mind to believe in Christianity for the mere pleasure of fancying I may be damned.”

“But what is Hope? Nothing but the paint on the face of Existence; the least touch of truth rubs it off, and then we see what a hollow-cheeked harlot we have got hold of.”

“Friendship is love without wings.”

“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.”