You cannot use someone else's fire. You can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe that you have it.

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

Only by learning to live in harmony with your contradictions can you keep it all afloat.

The more I use my strength in the service of my vision the less I am afraid.

There is a timbre of voice that comes from not being heard and knowing / you are not being heard / noticed only by others / not heard for the same reason.

I have come to believe that caring for myself is not self-indulgent. Caring for myself is an act of survival.

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.