Take the blinders from your visiontake the padding from your earsand confess you’ve heard me crying and admit you’ve seen my tears.

What humility does for one is it reminds us that there are people before me. I have already been paid for. And what I need to do is prepare myself so that I can pay...

I want to write so well that a person is 30 or 40 pages in a book of mine… before she realizes she’s reading.

Loving someone liberates the lover as well as the beloved. And that kind of love comes with age.

If I’m the people’s poet, then I ought to be in people’s hands – and, I hope, in their heart.

I’m very, very serious – I’m serious enough not to take myself too seriously. That means I can be completely wedded to the moment. But when I leave that moment, I want to be completely...

I’ve learned that making a ‘living’ is not the same thing as ‘making a life’.

A Woman in harmony with her spirit is like a river flowing.She goes where she will without pretense and arrives at her destination prepared to be herself and only herself

No matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.

We wear the mask that grins and lies.It shades our cheeks and hides our eyes.This debt we pay to human guileWith torn and bleeding hearts…We smile and mouth the myriad subtleties.Why should the world think...

I’m young as morningand fresh as dew.Everybody loves meand so do you.

Independence is a heady draught, and if you drink it in your youth, it can have the same effect on the brain as young wine does. It does not matter that its taste is not...

I know some people might think it odd – unworthy even – for me to have written a cookbook, but I make no apologies. The U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins thought I had demeaned myself...

I never had that feeling that I had to carry the weight of somebody’s ignorance around with me. And that was true for racists who wanted to use the ‘n’ word when talking about me...

I could fall in love with a sumo wrestler if he told stories and made me laugh. Obviously, it would be easier if someone was African-American and lived next door and went to the same...

I speak a number of languages, but none are more beautiful to me than English.

I do like to have guns around. I don’t like to carry them. But I like – if somebody is going to come into my house and I have not put out the welcome mat,...

I was born in St. Louis but lived there just for a few minutes in my life.

Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.

I am overwhelmed by the grace and persistence of my people.

In the flush of love’s lightwe dare be braveAnd suddenly we seethat love costs all we areand will ever be.Yet it is only lovewhich sets us free.

Because of the routines we follow, we often forget that life is an ongoing adventure. . . Life is pure adventure, and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat...

Thomas Wolfe warned in the title of America’s great novel that ‘You Can’t Go Home Again.’ I enjoyed the book but I never agreed with the title. I believe that one can never leave home....

If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.

In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats – maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats...

You have to develop ways so that you can take up for yourself, and then you take up for someone else. And so sooner or later, you have enough courage to really stand up for...

I’ve still not written as well as I want to. I want to write so that the reader in Des Moines, Iowa, in Kowloon, China, in Cape Town, South Africa, can say, ‘You know, that’s...

My greatest blessing has been the birth of my son. My next greatest blessing has been my ability to turn people into children of mine.

It is a no-fail, incontrovertible reality: If you get, give. If you learn, teach. You can’t do anything with that except do it.

I was very blessed to have family and friends, but particularly family, who told me I was not only all right, I was just right, so I believe that my brain is a good one,...

If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don’t be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning ‘Good morning’ at total strangers.

There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.

When I am writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we’re capable of, how we feel, how we lose and stand up, and go on from darkness into...

Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances.

As soon as healing takes place, go out and heal somebody else.

The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.

Growing up, my grandmother did not want worldly music in the house. Then when I went out to California, I started listening to Spanish music, mostly Mexican music. But were I in Egypt, I would...

To take a few nouns, and a few pronouns, and adverbs and adjectives, and put them together, ball them up, and throw them against the wall to make them bounce. That’s what Norman Mailer did....

I know that I’m not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear,...

I know for sure that loves saves me and that it is here to save us all.

I did work in a strip club, but I didn’t strip. I danced, and I became very popular.

The first decade of the twentieth century was not a great time to be born black and poor and female in St. Louis, Missouri, but Vivian Baxter was born black and poor, to black and...

People will forget what you saidPeople will forget what you didBut people will never forget how you made them feel.

I want to thank you, Lord, for life and all that’s in it. Thank you for the day and for the hour, and the minute.

To those who are given much, much is expected.

I believe that the most important single thing, beyond discipline and creativity is daring to dare.

Few, if any, survive their teens

We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans – because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other...

We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.

I never expected anyone to take care of me, but in my wildest dreams and juvenile yearnings, I wanted the house with the picket fence from June Allyson movies. I knew that was yearning like...