“It is sheer good fortune to miss somebody long before they leave you.”

“You looking good.""Devil's confusion. He lets me look good long as I feel bad.”

“If a Negro got legs he ought to use them. Sit down too long, somebody will figure out a way to tie them up.”

“Lonely, ain't it?Yes, but my lonely is mine. Now your lonely is somebody else's. Made by somebody else and handed to you. Ain't that something? A secondhand lonely.”

“I tell my students, 'When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.”

“It's a bad word, 'belong.' Especially when you put it with somebody you love ... You can't own a human being.”

“You can't own a human being. You can't lose what you don't own. Suppose you did own him. Could you really love somebody who was absolutely nobody without you? You really want somebody like that? Somebody who falls apart when you walk out the door? You don't, do you? And neither does he. You're turning over your whole life to him. Your whole life, girl. And if it means so little to you that you can just give it away, hand it to him, then why should it mean any more to him? He can't value you more than you value yourself.”