Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.

Listen, God love everything you love - and a mess of stuff you don't. But more than anything else, God love admiration. You saying God vain? I ast. Naw, she say. Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it. What it do when it pissed off? I ast. Oh, it make something else. People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.

I can be almost terminally grief-stricken because things are so dire, but at the same, there's a real lightheartednes s about just the recoverability of life, of how things change, how they're not the same, ever again.

It's so clear that you have to cherish everyone. I think that's what I get from these older black women, that every soul is to be cherished, that every flower Is to bloom.

Whoever you are, whatever you are, start with that, whether salt of the earth or only white sugar.

I don't know. I imagine good teaching as a circle of earnest people sitting down to ask each other meaningful questions. I don't see it as a handing down of answers.

I don't focus on criticism. I prefer to praise people and the world, rather than criticize them and it.