If you don’t define yourself for yourself then you will be crushed into other's fantasies of you and eaten alive

Differences must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic.

If what we need to dream, to move our spirits most deeply and directly toward and through promise, is discounted as a luxury, then we give up the core -- the fountain -- of our power, our womanness; we give up the future of our worlds. (From "Poetry is Not a Luxury")

Who I am is what fulfills me and fulfills the vision I have of the world.

But, on the other hand, I get bored with racism too and recognize that there are still many things to be said about a Black person and a White person loving each other in a racist society.

My fear of anger taught me nothing.

The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives.