“Here stands a girl clutching a knife. There is grease on the stove, blood in the air, and angry words piled in the corners. We are trained not to see it, not to see any of it…. Someone just ripped off my eyelids.”

“Well, I'm a standing on a corner
In Winslow, Arizona
And such a fine sight to see,
It's a girl, my lord, in a flatbed Ford
Slowin' down to have a look at me.”

“I see blood in here every day, every day someone's getting shot, someone's getting cut, someone's getting beat ... i've lived in that all my life woman, that don't wrinkle up my forehead ... you can pile 100 dead bodies up in front of my cell and it don't set me to do nothing ...”

“You clutched my personal hair and ripped it out by the roots.”

“Sitting here with one's knitting, one just sees the facts.

-"The Blood-Stained Pavement”

“I had never realized a woman could have to struggle to keep her hands off a man, but here I was, digging my nails into my palms, staring at the inside of my eyelids as though I could maybe see through them if I peered hard enough.”

“My doubts stand in a circle around every word, I see them before I see the word, but what then! I do not see the word at all, I invent it.”

“It's your fault, Eeyore. You've never been to see any of us. You just stay here in this one corner of the Forest waiting for the others to come to you. Why don't you go to THEM sometimes?”

“I put my head
out of my window and see
how much the wind’s knife
wants to slice it off.
On this unseen
guillotine, I’ve placed
the eyeless head
of all my desires.”

“You see, unfortunately, I am not black. There are lots of different kinds of blood in our family. But here in the United States, the word “Negro” is used to mean anyone who has any Negro blood at all in his veins. In Africa, the word is more pure. It means all Negro, therefore black. I am brown. My father was a darker brown. My mother an olive-yellow.”