“Black and Third World people are expected to educate white people as to our humanity.”

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

In the recognition of loving lies the answer to despair.

I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigated pain. It is important to share how I know survival is survival and not just a walk throught the rain.

We are powerful because we have survived, and that is what it is all about survival and growth.

Out of my flesh that hungers and my mouth that knows comes the shape I am seeking for reason.

The transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation .

In our work and in our living, we must recognize that difference is a reason for celebration and growth, rather than a reason for destruction.

I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self.

We recognize that all knowledge is mediated through the body and that feeling is a profound source of information about our lives.

Unless one lives and loves in the trenches, it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless.

The Seventh Sense – Women who build nations learn to love men who build nations learn to love children building sand castles by the rising sea.

Dark-bright fire lit eyes.

For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence.

We do not have to romanticize our past in order to be aware of how it seeds our present.

The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women.

For each of us as women, there is a dark place within, where hidden and growing our true spirit rises, beautiful and tough as chestnut stanchions against our nightmare of weakness.