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

Forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?

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.

Christ liveth in me. And how great the difference…instead of bondage, liberty; instead of failure, quiet victories within; instead of fear and weakness, a restful sense of sufficiency in Another.

When growth is slower than expected, stocks go down. When inflation is higher than expected, bonds go down. When inflation’s lower than expected, bonds go up.

You should do whatever feels right in your deepest heart. Feel deep as consciousness, open as water, now, and feel how to live with a wide-open heart. Feel how to live as love without bondage.

Everything you see comes from inside. People don’t see it but inside the dressing room we laugh and joke a lot so it’s not just for the cameras. It’s the way things are off the pitch too. We are happy for each other, it is all natural.

She loved me coming and going, at my worst and at my best. She had a bottomless well of love for me.

Families are always rising and falling in America.

We are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.

Friendships are discovered rather than made.