“I think life experiences are different for people who know what they want as children.”

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.

I was bad, but I was one of the kids that never got caught. If anyone ever knew I did something, it was because I told them. ‘Cause I’m a really good liar, so I end up snitching on myself.

The ego is like a kid in the basement: It’s best to keep him busy.

The greatest truth must be recognition that in every man, in every child is the potential for greatness.

I didn’t like children. I didn’t think of myself as a child. I didn’t like any of the things other children were interested in.

Women now have choices. They can be married, not married, have a job, not have a job, be married with children, unmarried with children. Men have the same choice we’ve always had: work, or prison.

The family was ordained of God that children might be trained up for himself; it was before the church, or rather the first form of the church on earth.

You go to a truck stop and there are key chains with names on them, and there’s no Finneas. There’s no Billie. They’re little things, but as a kid, you just feel weirdly ostracized.

It is just as often a great misfortune to be the child of the rich as it is to be the child of the poor. Wealth has its misfortunes. Too much, too great opportunity and advantage given to a child has its misfortunes.