Then I went back to my mother when I was 13 and she was ready for me.

He loved her. ... she can be talking to me about regular things but when she mentions Martin, her voice always falls a little bit and you can sense the intimacy. ... The sweetness of that relationship was always evident.

I became the kind of parent my mother was to me.

I don't believe an accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers. It makes them siblings, gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition people have to work at.

In all the world, there is no heart for me like yours. In all the world, there is no love for you like mine.

Had I not had my grandmother, who dared to be my rainbow in the clouds, I would have been just another sexually abused barefoot black girl on the roads of Arkansas,