“Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.”

I began writing a book on love because I felt that the United States is moving away from love.

Death is with you all the time; you get deeper in it as you move towards it, but it’s not unfamiliar to you. It’s always been there, so what becomes unfamiliar to you when you pass away from the moment is really life.

Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books.

As long as women are using class or race power to dominate other women, feminist sisterhood cannot be fully realized.

There will be no mass-based feminist movement as long as feminist ideas are understood only by a well-educated few.

All the men I fall for seem to have a commitment problem.

If we want a beloved community, we must stand for justice.

If you do not know what you feel, then it is difficult to choose love; it is better to fall. Then you do not have to be responsible for your actions.

The rage of the oppressed is never the same as the rage of the privileged.

The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control.

I believe that it is impossible for two individuals not committed to their own and each other’s well being to sustain a healthy and enduring relationship.

When we face pain in relationships our first response is often to sever bonds rather than to maintain commitment.

If any female feels she need anything beyond herself to legitimate and validate her existence, she is already giving away her power to be self-defining, her agency.

The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is-it’s to imagine what is possible.

To be truly visionary we have to root our imagination in our concrete reality while simultaneously imagining possibilities beyond that reality.

I think Black people need to take self-esteem seriously.

All of the young people – the artsy people, people who get overlooked because they’re weird or they don’t have hype around them – need to get some shine.

Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.

I was an art history major, but never specifically contemporary. I would say where I really stopped were the abstract expressionists in the New York school.

Writing is the art of applying the ass to the seat.

I wouldn’t mind collaborating with anybody, but I don’t want to design anything, I’m not a fashion designer.

Man gave us laws, and God gave us time, It’s the art of storytelling and I’m only telling mine.

But art is not simply works of art; it is the spirit that knows Beauty, that has music in its soul and the color of sunsets in its headkerchiefs; that can dance on a flaming world and make the world dance, too.

I’ve been designing since I was 8. I started sketching dresses I could wear when skating. I was always involved in all aspects of skating, not just the technique, the choreography, the music, but the visual aspects, too – what I should wear.