To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society

But the true feminist deals out of a lesbian consciousness whether or not she ever sleeps with women.

[Speaking] is never without fear; of visibility, of the harsh light of scrutiny and perhaps judgment, of pain, of death. But we have lived through all of those already, in silence, except death. And I remind myself all the time now, that if I were to have been born mute, and had maintained an oath of silence my whole life for safety, I would still have suffered, and I would still die.

Guilt and defensiveness are bricks in a wall against which we all flounder; they serve none of our futures.

Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.

The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.

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.