It does not pay to cherish symbols when the substance lies so close at hand.

Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference - those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are black, who are older - know that survival is not an academic skill...For the master's tools will not dismantle the master's house. They will never allow us to bring about genuine change.

Art is not living. It is the use of living. The artist has the ability to take the living and use it in a certain way and produce art.

. . . it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are-until the poem-nameless and formless, about to be birthed, but already felt.

When you reach out and touch other human beings, it doesn't matter whether you call it therapy or teaching or poetry.

Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare.

We tend to think of the erotic as an easy, tantalizing sexual arousal. I speak of the erotic as the deepest life force, a force which moves us toward living in a fundamental way.