Self-care is not about self-indulgence , it is about self-preservati on.

… our sons must become men – such men as we hope our daughters, born and unborn, will be pleased to live among. Our sons will not grow into women. Their way is more difficult than that of our daughters, for they must move away from us, without us. Hopefully ours have what they have learned from us, and a howness to forge into their own image.

what you hear in my voice is fury, not suffering. Anger, not moral authority

The sixties were characterized by a heady belief in instantaneous solutions.

The love expressed between women is particular and powerful because we have had to love in order to live; love has been our survival.

Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people.

Of all the art forms, poetry is the most economical. It is the one which is the most secret, which requires the least physical labor, the least material, and the one which can be done between shifts, in the hospital pantry, on the subway, and on scraps of surplus paper. ... poetry has been the major voice of poor, working class, and Colored women. A room of one's own may be a necessity for writing prose, but so are reams of paper, a typewriter, and plenty of time.