Luckily, my father and my mother liked us to talk, so they encouraged us to talk, so that the girls in my house, they're all very powerful speakers and powerful agents of their own will, as is my brother.

I had - there were three strokes, and I lost my ability to read and write and speak, and it really put me by the wayside for a number of years.

My family moved around a lot, so I don't have any friends that I had all my life, but I did have annual trips back to Queens.

When I die, I will not be guilty of having left a generation of girls behind thinking that anyone can tend to their emotional health other than themselves.

There was quite a ruckus about the seven ladies in their simple colored dresses. I was truly dumbfounded that I was, right then and there, deemed the biggest threat to black men since cotton pickin', and not all women were in my corner, either.

It still amazes and fascinates me that women of color have kept my work alive for these many generations.

I never intended to go to Broadway. I was very happy being in an Off Broadway theater and having an Off Broadway life. What it did to me is try to fit a round peg - that's me - into a whole bunch of square buildings. I just didn't fit.

My characters don't talk necessarily in a normal American way of talking. They talk a little different.

I was constantly being sought after for money. And the vitriol that came my way from many who felt threatened by controversial aspects of 'for colored girls' was often frightening.

Before I went to college, I went to the S.N.C.C. office three times a week to offer my services and catch up on my 'Liberator' magazine. The other two days, I went to the Lycee Francais to keep my French crisp. I felt comfortable in the diversity of my worlds.