I always thought I was able and competent all the while I was rearing them.

In retrospect, I certainly think it would have been much better from a public relations viewpoint not to have played the games, because I did respect President Kennedy a great deal.

I don't think I really understood that you could choose writing as a profession for many years later. It wasn't really until I was 17, when I read Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison and saw, 'Oh, someone like me, a black woman, can do this ...

I always thought superintelligence was a long way off and we could worry about it later, and the problem for now is just to make these more intelligent. I wish I'd thought sooner about what was going to happen.

It was only with her help that I did everything. The tragedy was that after 40 years of marriage she died of cancer. I say that if Martin and I had not married the little country girls we married from Alabama, you never would have heard our names.

Her lesson all the time was “To them to whom much has been given, of them will much be required.”

Everything I did, and I think everything Martin Luther King did, was because we allowed our lives to be in tune with what we felt to be a divine purpose. And it didn’t matter whether we lived or died. It didn’t matter how much money we made, or what we accomplished.

I knew what I had done wrong. I had followed the experts and put the money I had in television. The second time around I spent almost no money on television. The only money I spent on television, I spent on Ted Turner's station, late at night on something called Creature Feature and wrestling. Because those were things that I knew people looked at. But we spent most of our money organizing people door-to-door.

[My father] used to say all the time, “You’re in a struggle, but if you get in a fight and lose your temper, you’ll lose the fight. So don’t get mad, get smart.”

It was only with her help that I did everything. The tragedy was that after 40 years of marriage she died of cancer.