“When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.”

I wish to raise a Black man who will recognize that the legitimate objects of his hostility are not women, but the particulars of a structure that programs him to fear and despise women as well as his own Black self.

My experience with people who tried to label me was that they usually did it to either dismiss me or use me.

There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.

I remember how being young and Black and gay and lonely felt. A lot of it was fine, feeling I had the truth and the light and the key, but a lot of it was purely hell.

Without community, there is no liberation.

The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.

Anger, used, does not destroy. Hatred does.

Each time you love, love as deeply as if it were forever.

Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.

Wherever the bird with no feet flew, she found trees with no limbs.

We are all more blind to what we have than to what we have not.

Oppressors always expect the oppressed to extend to them the understanding so lacking in themselves.

You are the one that you are looking for.

I am not only a casualty, I am also a warrior.

We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings.

Whenever the need for some pretense of communication arises, those who profit from our oppression call upon us to share our knowledge with them

Obstacles are like wild animals. They are cowards but they will bluff you if they can. If they see you are afraid of them… they are liable to spring upon you; but if you look them squarely in the eye, they will slink out of sight.

I wish to live without hate, whim, jealousy, envy, and fear. I wish to be simple, honest, frank, natural . . to face any obstacle and meet every difficulty unabashed and unafraid.

When a woman puts up her fists to a man she is putting herself in the only posture in which he is not afraid of her.

Wild animals would not stay in a country where there were so many people. Pa did not like to stay, either. He liked a country where the wild animals lived without being afraid.

Are you afraid of their potential? or you just unaware of yours.

We all start off afraid.

I’m afraid to let lightening strike me, but I think you and I could be the perfect storm.

Don’t be afraid of missing opportunities. Behind every failure is an opportunity somebody wishes they had missed.