Well, I do not want to be tolerated, nor misnamed. I want to be recognized.

I have suckled the wolf's lip of anger and I have used it for illumination, laughter, protection, fire in places where there was no light, no food, no sisters, no quarter.

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.

You loved people and you came to depend on their being there. but people died or changed or went away and it hurt too much. The only way to avoid that poin was not to love anyone, and not to let anyone get too close or too important. The secret of not being hurt like this again, I decided, was never depending on anyone, never needing, never loving.It is the last dream of children, to be forever untouched.

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

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

Out of my flesh that hungers and my mouth that knows comes the shape I am seeking for reason.