“The more I use my strength in the service of my vision the less I am afraid.”

One pays a lot, we all pay a lot, for awareness.

Pain is important: how we evade it, how we succumb to it, how we deal with it, how we transcend it.

Oppression is as American as apple pie.

I have come to believe that caring for myself is not self-indulgent. Caring for myself is an act of survival.

Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people.

Our visions begin with our desires.

Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one’s own actions or lack of action.

Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge.

Women are powerful and dangerous.

What you hear in my voice is fury, not suffering. Anger, not moral authority.

Some problems we share as women, some we do not.

I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do.

I wish to raise a Black man who will not be destroyed by, nor settle for, those corruptions called power by the white fathers who mean his destruction as surely as they mean mine.

It does not pay to cherish symbols when the substance lies so close at hand.

There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.

I am bleak heroism of words that refuse to be buried alive with the liars.

Don’t be afraid to shed the leaves of your past decisions, so you can thrive in this new season.

Truth is not afraid of questions.

And with the right mentor, don’t be afraid to expose your vulnerabilities. Admit you don’t know what you don’t know. When you acknowledge your weaknesses and ask for advice, you’ll be surprised how much others will help.

You are afraid to die, and you’re afraid to live. What a way to exist.

In order to access a warrior’s courage, we must explore why we are so committed to our story and what we are afraid will happen if we give it up.

The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for.

No, I am not afraid; the Lord said he would protect me, and I have full confidence in His word.

Faith in something greater than ourselves enables us to do what we have said we’ll do, to press forward when we are tired or hurt or afraid, to keep going when the challenge seems overwhelming and the course is entirely uncertain.