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.

Women have to summon courage to fulfill dormant dreams.

Surely the earth can be saved by all the people who insist on love.

The long-term accommodation that protects marriage and other such relationships is ... forgetfulness.

The forest is the first cathedral. I felt that from the time I was a child. I credit my mother with that. I used to think it came from her Native-American side. Whichever it was, she instinctively connected with nature, and taught me that. Church just could not hold my spirit.

I come from somewhere and from specific black people in the South, including my parents, who built our first school, and rebuilt it after it was burned to the ground. And they used to bake pies and cakes to raise money to keep it going. So, I learned to struggle from a very early way in a way that was truly indigenous to the South.

It's better to have your blackness taken away than to stand and lie about who you actually are.