Vaunda Micheaux Nelson

“A person has to have confidence in what he's going to do. If he don't, he's not going to do it long. He has to have confidence first in his idea and next in himself.
Two men have different ideas and they go to work on them. Now the first fella's idea may come up soon. Your may linger a long, long time, but any idea, if it's well done, will come up in its own time.
You can plant five seeds at the same moment - tomato, potato, cabbage, lettuce, beets - place them at the same moment. ANd they all don't come up at the same time. If the beet would get discouraged because the cabbage come up in front of him, then there wouldn't be no beets. And if the cabbage would get discouraged because the tomato come up before his program, then there wouldn't be no cabbage.
Now the evidence of a test that's gonna come in your time of doing is the sacrifice. Hungry - that's in the making of the program. Broke - that's in the making of the program. All these things will discourage you. But you can't let them discourage you.
I believed that I would do a thing, and I went to work doin' it.
-Lewis Michaux, Harlem Bookseller”
― Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, No Crystal Stair: A Documentary Novel of the Life and Work of Lewis Michaux, Harlem Bookseller