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. Ntozake Shange Read Quote
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. Ntozake Shange Read Quote
I hadn’t published a book of poetry in over a decade because I’ve been very ill. As I got better and started to write, I said, ‘Wow, even as an old woman, I could have a selected book of poems.’ Ntozake Shange Read Quote
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. Ntozake Shange Read Quote
I started writing because there’s an absence of things I was familiar with or that I dreamed about. One of my senses of anger is related to this vacancy – a yearning I had as a teenager… and when I get ready to write, I think I’m trying to fill that. Ntozake Shange Read Quote
I think art is a healing force, and if we give in to the joy that can be found in art, then we are able to sustain ourselves in spite of ourselves. Ntozake Shange Read Quote
It still amazes and fascinates me that women of color have kept my work alive for these many generations. Ntozake Shange Read Quote
I’ve still got my characters in my head, and I can still hear them. When I go to the grocery store, I hear them. Ntozake Shange Read Quote
Spell-check ruins my work. It fixes all my slang and dialect into standard English. So I’m caught in a tangle of technology that feels very foreign to me. Ntozake Shange Read Quote
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. Ntozake Shange Read Quote
