“In our work and in our living, we must recognize that difference is a reason for celebration and growth, rather than a reason for destruction.”

What you hear in my voice is fury, not suffering. Anger, not moral authority.

Some problems we share as women, some we do not.

I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do.

I wish to raise a Black man who will not be destroyed by, nor settle for, those corruptions called power by the white fathers who mean his destruction as surely as they mean mine.

It does not pay to cherish symbols when the substance lies so close at hand.

There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.

I am bleak heroism of words that refuse to be buried alive with the liars.

In the recognition of loving lies the answer to despair.

I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigated pain. It is important to share how I know survival is survival and not just a walk throught the rain.

Black and Third World people are expected to educate white people as to our humanity.

We are powerful because we have survived, and that is what it is all about survival and growth.

Out of my flesh that hungers and my mouth that knows comes the shape I am seeking for reason.

The transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation .

I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self.

We recognize that all knowledge is mediated through the body and that feeling is a profound source of information about our lives.

Unless one lives and loves in the trenches, it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless.

Once, if I remember well, my life was a feast where all hearts opened and all wines flowed.

No matter how many people celebrate your gifts, don’t ever think that you are more important to them than your gift is to them. This is why many people fail: They fail because they think that people came to follow them.

Life has meaning only in the struggle. Triumph or defeat is in the hands of the Gods. So let us celebrate the struggle!

Why has there never been a holiday where peace is celebrated all throughout the world?

I want to take all the pain that I feel and celebrate and turn it around.

In the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celebrate the nonbelongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks.

Pasteur will be celebrated almost as a God-like figure. This is when the moon completes her great cycle, but by other rumors, he shall be dishonored.

I reflected a lot, I thought a lot on my 50th birthday. It has been one of the most important birthdays in my life, not in terms of celebration but in terms of retrospect.