We should not look down on our first ancestors.

It is important to remember yourself.

Nobody has ever convinced me that race is real.

On a spiritual level, it's as though with my sighted eye I see what's before me, and with my unsighted eye I see what's hidden. It's illuminated life more than darkened it.

People really had a problem with my disinterest in submission. They had a problem with my intellect, and they had a problem with my choice of lovers. They had a problem with my choice of everything.

If you deny people their own voice, you'll have no idea of who they were.

I was brought up to try to see what was wrong and right it. Since I am a writer, writing is how I right it.

I cry so much less than I used to. I used to be one of the most teary people.

Part of our tradition as black women is that we are universalists. Black children, yellow children, red children, brown children, that is the black woman's normal, day-to-day relationship. In my family alone, we are about four different colors.

I have a collective sense of suffering.

Some people are painters, and some are ballet dancers, and I'm a writer.

I think all documentaries leave out areas of people's lives. Which is good. There are areas that need not be explored.

My parents were both storytellers. They always spoke with metaphorical richness.

'Fame' exhausts me.

I know black people love the idea that we finally have a beautiful, good-looking black president. But if he is doing awful things to us, we should wake up.

As long as the people don't fear the truth, there is hope. For once they fear it, the one who tells it doesn't stand a chance. And today, truth is still beautiful... but so frightening.

I've always felt quite singular, even as a child. That I must stay on track to keep my purpose.

I don't know if I've ever cared much what others think.

A people do not throw their geniuses away. And if they are thrown away, it is our duty as artists and as witnesses for the future to collect them again for the sake of our children and, if necessary, bone by bone.

Women have to summon up courage to fulfill dormant dreams.

Many readers fail to realize this, but 'The Color Purple' is a theological text. It is about the reclamation of one's original God: the earth and nature.

Poetry is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution, and the raising of consciousness.

How long will it take the citizens of the United States, one wonders, to recognize that the house their country bombed in Iraq is the same one they were living in until it was foreclosed?

My parents taught me service - not by saying, but by doing. That was my culture, the culture of my family.