“Life is very short and what we have to do must be done in the now.”

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.

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.

Life isn’t meant to be lived perfectly but merely to be LIVED. Boldly, wildly, beautifully, uncertainly, imperfectly, magically LIVED.

Moses spent forty years thinking he was somebody; forty years learning he was nobody; and forty years discovering what God can do with a nobody.

We are meant to discover our authentic nature-the state of being in which we are inspired by ourselves, turned on, lit up, and excited about who we are.

The most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen.

Winners are not born, they are self-made.

[No society can survive the socialist] fallacy that there is an absolutely unlimited number of inspired officials and an absolutely unlimited amount of money to pay them.

God is not looking for gold vessels or silver vessels. He is looking for willing vessels

You have to find something that you love enough to be able to take risks.