“I had been allowed to believe in man's innate goodness for the twenty-two years of my life, and I had hoped to carry the belief with me to my grave.”

“...Mr. Hardie had little patience with that sort of conversation."Ye're born, ye suffer, and ye die. What made ye think ye deserved different?" he wondered aloud when the deacon's gentle answers fa...”

“I wondered if all a person could hope for was illusion and luck, for I was forced to conclude that the world was fundamentally and appallingly dangerous. It is a lesson I will never forget.”

“When we are babies...we need an authoritative figure to guide and take care of us. We ask no questions about that authority and imagine that the small circumference of family life is the limit of t...”

“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.”