“To gaze into another person’s face is to do two things: to recognize their humanity, and to assert your own.”

“To gaze into another persons face is to do two things: to recognise their humanity and to assert your own.”

“I had learned that there were times when fighting was impossible, when the best thing to do was to wait and to learn.”

“Let me begin with a caveat to any and all who find these pages. Do not trust large bodies of water, and do not cross them. If you, dear reader, have an African hue and find yourself led toward water with vanishing shores, seize your freedom by any means necessary. And cultivate distrust of the colour pink. Pink is taken as the colour of innocence, the colour of childhood, but as it spills across the water in the light of the dying sun, do not fall into its pretty path. There, right underneath, lies a bottomless graveyard of children, mothers and men. I shudder to imagine all the Africans rocking in the deep. Every time I have sailed the seas, I have had the sense of gliding over the unburied.Some people call the sunset a creation of extraordinary beauty, and proof of God's existence. But what benevolent force would bewitch the human spirit by choosing pink to light the path of a slave vessel? Do not be fooled by the pretty colour, and do not submit to its beckoning.”

“You must learn to respect," Papa said.But I do not respect her," I said.Papa paused for a moment, and patted my leg. "Then you must learn to hide your disrespect.”

“I remember wondering, within a year or two of taking my first my first steps, why only men sat to drink tea and converse, and why women were always busy. I reasoned that men were weak and needed rest.”

“Some say that I was once uncommonly beautiful, but I wouldn't wish beauty on any woman who has not her own freedom, and who chooses not the hands that claim her.”