“It is true that I am a person with black pockets of evil and hatred in my heart. There are underground places inside of me”

“This is not the person I wanted to become: Hatred has carved a permanent place inside me, a hollow where things are so easily lost.”

“I wear this because it suits me, it’s a part of who I am, of what I am. My soul is black, my life is black—as black as the nothingness that surrounds me.”

“Somewhere inside me there’ll always be the person I am to-night”

“Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains ... an unuprooted small corner of evil. Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: They struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person.”

“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.”