“Being oppressed means the absence of choices.”

Whenever women struggle with breast cancer and face better care than ever, that’s feminism.

The political core of any movement for freedom in the society has to have the political imperative to protect free speech.

Sometimes people try to destroy you, precisely because they recognize your power – not because they don’t see it, but because they see it and they don’t want it to exist.

One of the most subversive institutions in the United States is the public library.

I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else’s whim or to someone else’s ignorance.

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

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

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.

The people I love, I’m committed to loving for the rest of my life.

What we cannot imagine cannot come into being.

No black woman writer in this culture can write “too much”. Indeed, no woman writer can write “too much”. No woman has ever written enough.

You can only realize change if you live simply. Once people want enormous excess, you can hardly do social change.

To love well is the task in all meaningful relationships, not just romantic bonds.

There is no life to be found in violence. Every act of violence brings us closer to death.

Justice demands integrity. It’s to have a moral universe – not only know what is right or wrong but to put things in perspective, weigh things. Justice is different from violence and retribution; it requires complex accounting.

When we choose to love, we choose to move against fear, against alienation and separation. The choice to love is a choice to connect, to find ourselves in the other.

I’m not making a problem out of a personal question; I make of a personal question an absence of a problem.

Let them walk away. They will grasp for air, because of your absence, and because you were already ten steps ahead of them.

liberty, to define it, is nothing other than the absence of impediments to motion

Sadness that is caused by the absence of love is deadly for the heart.

Your absence in my heart has taught me how to find my own way finally.

You’ve retracted your rays of warmth. You’ve pulled the clouds to cover sunlight. I think everyone is growing more concerned as the days keep passing and you’re still absent.

I wanted you to value my presence just enough to prevent my absence.

I wanted you to value my presence just enough to prevent my absence.