‎Once we recognize what it is we are feeling, once we recognize we can feel deeply, love deeply, can feel joy, then we will demand that all parts of our lives produce that kind of joy.

All writers have periods when they stop writing, when they cannot write, and this is always painful and terrible because writing is like breathing.

I believe one of the hardest things you can do is conquer your fears, but if you have a goal, then it's your job to open up and let it be real no matter how scary it seems.

Raising Black children — female and male — in the mouth of a racist, sexist, suicidal dragon is perilous and chancy. If they cannot love and resist at the same time, they will probably not survive. And in order to survive they must let go. This is what mothers teach — love, survival — that is, self-definition and letting go.

The absence of any consideration of lesbian consciousness or the consciousness of third world women leaves a serious gap within this conference. . . .

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

If I cannot air this pain and alter it, I will surely die of it. That's the beginning of social protest.