You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you...

I’m grateful to intelligent people. That doesn’t mean educated. That doesn’t mean intellectual. I mean really intelligent. What black old people used to call ‘mother wit’ means intelligence that you had in your mother’s womb....

If we accept being talked to any kind of a way, then we are telling ourselves we are not quite worth the best. And if we have the effrontery to talk to anybody with less...

How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!

The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.

I love the song ‘I Hope You Dance’ by Lee Ann Womack. I was going to write that song, but someone beat me to it.

I’ve never had a dislike for men. I’ve been badly treated by some. But I’ve been loved greatly by some. I married a lot of them.

I keep a hotel room in my town, although I have a large house. And I go there at about 5:30 in the morning, and I start working. And I don’t allow anybody to come...

If more Africans had eaten missionaries, the continent would be in better shape

Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for.

Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.

There is nothing quite so tragic as a young cynic, because it means the person has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

I had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss

Whatever you want to do, if you want to be great at it, you have to love it and be able to make sacrifices for it.

The best comfort food will always be greens, cornbread, and fried chicken.

I’ve always written. There’s a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother’s papers...

The sadness of the women’s movement is that they don’t allow the necessity of love. See, I don’t personally trust any revolution where love is not allowed.

The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you – black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight.

The hope, the hope that lives in the breast of the black American, is just so tremendous that it overwhelms me sometimes.

If I walked into the kitchen without washing my hands as a kid, I’d hear a loud ‘A-hem!’ from my mother or grandmother. Now I count on other people to do the same.

Alone”Lying, thinkingLast nightHow to find my soul a homeWhere water is not thirstyAnd bread loaf is not stoneI came up with one thingAnd I don’t believe I’m wrongThat nobody,But nobodyCan make it out here alone.Alone,...

First best is falling in love. Second best is being in love. Least best is falling out of love. But any of it is better than never having been in love.

There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure truth.

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

I can be changed by what happened to me, but I refuse to be reduced by it.

We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.

During bad circumstances, which is the human inheritance, you must decide not to be reduced. You have your humanity, and you must not allow anything to reduce that. We are obliged to know we are...

I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: ‘I’m with you kid. Let’s go.’

Somehow, we have come to the erroneous belief that we are all but flesh, blood, and bones, and that’s all. So we direct our values to material things.

I wrote some of the worst poetry west from the Mississippi River, but I wrote. And I finally sometimes got it right.

Those of us who submitted or surrendered our ideas and dreams and identities to the ‘leaders’ must take back our rights, our identities, our responsibilities.

I know that one of the great arts that the writer develops is the art of saying, ‘No. No, I’m finished. Bye.’ And leaving it alone. I will not write it into the ground. I...

What you’re supposed to do when you don’t like a thing is change it. If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it. Don’t complain.

Caged BirdA free bird leaps on the back of the windand floats downstream till the current endsand dips his wing in the orange suns rays and dares to claim the sky.But a bird that stalks...

It is by observation that in the future they will not remember what you said, they will not remember what you did, but they will remember how you made them feel.

Love. And again, see I don’t mean, I think love is that condition in the human spirit so profund, that it allows us to forgive, and it may be the energy which keeps the stars...

One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.

I believe that each of us comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory.

The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.

Self-pity in its early stage is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.

Whenever I’m around some who is modest, I think, ‘Run like hell and all of fire.’ You don’t want modesty, you want humility.

I’m a religious woman. And I feel I have responsibility. I have no modesty at all. I’m even afraid of it – it’s a learned affectation and it’s just stuck on me like decals. Now...

I will look after you and I will look after anybody you say needs to be looked after, any way you say. I am here. I brought my whole self to you. I am your...

Nothing will work unless you do.

When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.

We need the courage to create ourselves daily, to be bodacious enough to create ourselves daily — as Christians, as Jews, as Muslims, as thinking, caring, laughing, loving human beings. I think that the courage...

Until blacks and whites see each other as brother and sister, we will not have parity. It’s very clear.

Early on, I was so impressed with Charles Dickens. I grew up in the South, in a little village in Arkansas, and the whites in my town were really mean, and rude. Dickens, I could...