Helped are those who create anything at all, for they shall relive the thrill of their own conception and realize a partnership in the creation of the Universe that keeps them responsible and cheerful.
I realized I was a country person – I’m just not used to small spaces.
Some people are painters, and some are ballet dancers, and I’m a writer.
And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see – or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.
I met Howard Zinn in 1961, my first year at Spelman College in Atlanta. He was the tall, rangy, good-looking professor that many of the girls at Spelman swooned over.
I can easily imagine Obama sitting down and talking to any leader – or any person – in the world, with no baggage of past servitude or race supremacy to mar their talks.
I love us so incredibly, insanely deeply; it’s almost unbearable to see what we do to ourselves.
I’m still living at least five parallel lives, honestly! I wonder about it. I have no idea how that happens.
Wherever I have knocked, a door has opened. Wherever I have wandered, a path has appeared.
Women have to summon up courage to fulfill dormant dreams.
I feel very happy to be living in Berkeley because there are a lot of people who are politically active here.
Artists have a responsibility to speak and to act when governments fail, and if we don’t do that, we really deserve the world we get.
Fear is real, but so is love.
