"Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to 'jump at the sun.' We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground."

"I like myself when I am laughing. And then I think that is the best way to like yourself. To be laughing."

"White people are not the problem. It is the problem of white people that they think they are the problem."

"I would not exchange my life for any other. I have enjoyed every minute of it."

"Dat's what makes a man and a woman. You can't have one without the other."