In the far upper corner of my altar is a photo of Joan Crawford in her most fierce Mommy Dearest mode, just to remind me of some of the cost of everyone's hard-earned sweetness and light.
I was distressed that after 9/11, when the United States was attacked by terrorists, the United States' response was to attack Afghanistan, where some of the terrorists had been.
You got to fight them, Celie, she say. I can't do it for you. You got to fight them for yourself. I don't say nothing. I think bout Nettie, dead. She fight, she run away. What good it do? I don't fight, I stay where I'm told. But I'm alive.
I love my own culture. I love my African-American culture very deeply, and I know it deserves to be honored. You have to be aware that people are suffering unjustly, and given our own history we have a duty to stand for the people who are being treated like our parents and grandparents and children were treated.
I think colors are miraculous. We live in a universe that is extremely creative and magical. We become happier as we appreciate these things in nature.
Sometimes, reading a blog, which I do infrequently, I see that generations of Americans have been wilfully crippled, and can no longer spell or write a sentence.
I believe God is everything, say Shug. Everything that is or ever was or ever will be. And when you can feel that, and be happy to feel that, you've found It.
I have fallen in love with the imagination. And if you fall in love with the imagination, you understand that it is a free spirit. It will go anywhere, and it can do anything.