“The new paternalists really think, it seems, that their utterances of the oldest racial cliches are, somehow, a demonstration of their liberation from the hanky-panky of liberalism and God knows what else”

“The play entertains the forbidden nightmare of the liberal: what, dear Lord, if the reactionary is correct, and people are horrible. Yet, with the same breath, it is revolutionary”

"Like a number of other black women writers, I have made it a point to speak of our 'tradition,' yet I know that no such tradition is assumed by the rest of the world, primarily because our books have not been read or taught"