The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women. It has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, the plasticized sensation.

Hatred is a death wish for the hated, not a life wish for anything else.

Pain is important: how we evade it, how we succumb to it, how we deal with it, how we transcend it.

Black writers, of whatever quality, who step outside the pale of what black writers are supposed to write about, or who black writers are supposed to be, are condemned to silences in black literary circles that are as total and as destructive as any imposed by racism.

The white fathers told us: I think, therefore I am. The black goddess within each of us - the poet - whispers in our dreams: I feel, therefore I can be free.

I train myself for triumph by knowing it is mine no matter what.

I am my best work - a series of road maps, reports, recipes, doodles, and prayers from the front lines.