“When you reach out and touch other human beings, it doesn’t matter whether you call it therapy or teaching or poetry.”

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.

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

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.

The glory of God is humankind fully alive.

I guess I’m just quite observant and I pay attention to a lot of things. Human behavior really fascinates me.

The fact is, I need God to help me love God. And if I need His help to love Him, a perfect being, I definitely need His help to love other, fault-filled humans.

Compassion allows us to understand that, as citizens of the planet, we’re all in this together and that in order to ensure our survival we must hold and cultivate a new and larger vision of what’s possible for ourselves and for the human race as a whole.

Science is the most durable and nondivisive way of thinking about the human circumstance. It transcends cultural, national, and political boundaries. You don’t have American science versus Canadian science versus Japanese science.

Religious moderation is the direct result of taking scripture less and less seriously. So why not take it less seriously still? Why not admit the the Bible is merely a collection of imperfect books written by highly fallible human beings.

We have a choice. We have two options as human beings. We have a choice between conversation and war. That’s it. Conversation and violence. And faith is a conversation stopper.

I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs.