she must provide a blanket of stability, which warms but does not suffocate, and she must tell her children the truth about the power of white power … - Maya Angelou

The city became for me the ideal of what I wanted to be as a grown-up. Friendly, but never gushing, cool but not frigid or distant, distinguished without the awful stiffness.

I have learned to accept my responsibility and to forgive myself first, then to apologise to anyone injured by my misreckoning.

Many members of that early band of twentieth-century pilgrims must have yearned for the honesty of Southern landscapes where even if they were the targets of hate mongers who wanted them dead, they were at least credited with being alive. Northern whites with their public smiles of liberal acceptance and their private behavior of utter rejection wearied and angered the immigrants.