If our history has taught us anything, it is that action for change directed against the external conditions of our oppressions is not enough.

We must recognize and nurture the creative parts of each other without always understanding what will be created.

Differences must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic.

We cannot settle for the pretenses of connection, or for the parodies of self-love.

The failure of academic feminists to recognize difference as a crucial strength is a failure to reach beyond the first patriarchal lesson. In our world, divide and conquer must become define and empower.

Every Black woman in America lives her life somewhere along a wide curve of ancient and unexpressed angers.

It is axiomatic that if we do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by others-for their use and to our detriment.