As a journalist, the details always tell the story..

There's such a big difference between being dead and alive, I told myself, the greatest gift that anyone can give anyone else is life. And the greate….

Testosterone is a sex hormone, and I think it is the most social of hormones. The major social effect of testosterone is to orient us toward issues o….

The question of religion in black America is something filmmakers don't want to touch..

The basic thing is to be humble, and pretend you're a bartender in the tavern of life. Don't get too comfortable and don't really listen to anybody e….

The man was the finest preacher. He could make a frog stand up straight and get happy with Jesus..

The black church will accept anybody..

So sweet and precious is family life..

My parents were nonmaterialistic. They believed that money without knowledge was worthless, that education tempered with religion was the way to clim….

It is hard to find romance in the present because there's nothing left to the imagination..

I asked her if I was black or white. She replied "You are a human being. Educate yourself or you'll be a nobody!.

If you're a creative person, you'd better not read what people write about you, because if it's good it'll blow your head up and it'll force you not ….

You have to choose between what the world expects of you and what you want for yourself..

It was always so hot, and everyone was so polite, and everything was all surface but underneath it was like a bomb waiting to go off. I always felt t….

Be kind to the living..

I'm one of the few Black writers, or African American writers, who managed to work my way through the system so that it has allowed me to speak in a ….

But what difference does it make? ... When you're mixed, you see how absurd this business of race is..

I can write anywhere really. I have a hard time writing when the birds are tweeting and the brooks are running outside. I've tried that several times….

There has to be some mystery in life, because the joy of being a writer and the joy of being a musician is the joy of discovery. I don't want someone….

I felt like a Tinker toy kid building my own self out of one of those toy building sets; for as she laid her life before me, I reassembled the tablea….

There are two responses to really awful things. One is to lament and say, "Oh my God, oh lord." And the other is to laugh at it a little bit, try you….