“Don't be bitter. Remember Lot's wife when they kill me, and they surely will. You have to use all of your energy to do what it is you have to do. [To his wife Betty Shabazz]”

“If a tree falls in the forest and kills your ex-wife, what do you do with the lumber?”

“Do not assume a role you have not been given. In other words, don't do the things a wife does until you are a wife. Be a friend until he carries you over the threshold.”

“What do you have to worry about? That you're lonely? That you have a mortgage? That your wife doesn't love you? F you, F you. I have to worry about having enough to eat!”

“Perhaps one of the hardest things about having kids is realizing that you love someone more than your wife. That it's possible to love someone more than you love your wife. What's even worse is that it's a love you don't have to work at. It's just there. It just sits there, indestructible, getting stronger and stronger. While the love for your wife, the one you do have to work at, and work so very hard at, gets nothing. Gets neglected, left to fend for itself. Like a houseplant forgotten on a windowsill.”

“Then you shouldn't have thrown her away when she was your wife. Now she ain't. Now she's somethin' to me and I don't let men I don't like get close to her and I gotta tell you man, I do not like you.”