In our work and in our living, we must recognize that difference is a reason for celebration and growth, rather than a reason for destruction.

...and that visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength.

We must constantly encourage ourselves and each other to attempt the heretical actions that our dreams imply and so many of our old ideas disparage.

Black women are programmed to define ourselves within this male attention and to compete with each other for it rather than to recognize and move upon our common interests.

I soon discovered that if you keep your mouth shut, people are apt to believe you know everything, and they begin to feel freer and freer to tell you anything, anxious to show that they know something, too.

Learning not to crumple before these uncertainties fuels my resolve to print myself upon the texture of each day fully rather than forever.

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