My great-great-great-grandmother walked as a slave from Virginia to Eatonton, Georgia... It is in memory of this walk that I chose to keep and to embrace my "maiden" name, Walker.

Anything we love can be saved.

The experience of God, or in any case the possibility of experiencing God, is innate.

I'm pore, I'm black, I may be ugly and can't cook, a voice say to everything listening. But I'm here.

Human compassion is equal to human cruelty, and it is up to each of us to tip the balance.

Poetry, I have discovered, is always unexpected and always as faithful and honest as dreams.

In the far upper corner of my altar is a photo of Joan Crawford in her most fierce Mommy Dearest mode, just to remind me of some of the cost of everyone's hard-earned sweetness and light.