No matter how hidden the cruelty, no matter how far off the screams of pain and terror, we live in one world. We are one people.

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

What I am really interested in is that I want people to be thinking in other ways - to stop thinking they have to remain glued to a system that has failed and to ideas about society that's necessarily about being run by Democrats or Republicans.

Ignorance, arrogance, and racism have bloomed as Superior Knowledge in all too many universities.

I just like to have words that describe things correctly. Now to me, 'black feminist' does not do that. I need a word that is organic, that really comes out of the culture, that really expresses the spirit that we see in black women. And it's just... womanish.

I started writing as a child. But I didn't think of myself, actually writing until I was in college. And I had gone to Africa as a sophomore or something, no maybe junior and wrote a book of poems. And that was my beginning. I published that book.

You don't really stay attached to things. Life goes on, so you don't really sit around and think about how they are relevant to other people. You hope that whatever you create will be [relevant].