“What swells inside me is a love so boundless, I am the sunrise and sunset. I am Liberty Bell in the Cascades. I am Beihai Lake. I am every beautiful, truly beautiful, thing I've ever seen, captured in my personal Geographia, the atlas of myself.”

“I am not loved. I am not a beautiful soul. I am not a good-natured, giving person. I am not anybody's savior.”

“I am the sunrise of sunsets, and I make love like noon at midnight.”

“I feel such a creative force in me: I am convinced that there will be a time when, let us say, I will make something good every day , on a regular basis....I am doing my very best to make every effort because I am longing so much to make beautiful things. But beautiful things mean painstaking work, disappointment, and perseverance.”

“So what if I cannot be a model, if I am no longer considered beautiful, if Malvolia is trying to catch me. I am climbing a tree! And I am doing so with Jack.”

“I am a human being; I am a woman; I am a black woman; I am an African. Once I was free; then I was captured and became a slave; but inside me, I have never been a slave; even today, inside me, here, and here, I am still a free woman.”