So it is better to speak, remembering we were never meant to survive.

I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.

It does not pay to cherish symbols when the substance lies so close at hand.

In our work and in our living, we must recognize that difference is a reason for celebration and growth, rather than a reason for destruction.

Pain is an event ... Suffering, on the other hand, is the nightmare reliving of unscrutinized and unmetabolized pain.

It's possible to take that as a personal metaphor and then multiply it to a people, a race, a sex, a time. If we can keep this thing going long enough, if we can survive and teach what we know, we'll make it.

But in a crunch, when all our asses are in the sling, it looks like it is easier to deal with the samenesses. When we deal with sameness only, we develop weapons that we use against each other when the differences become apparent. And we wipe each other out - Black men and women can wipe each other out - far more effectively than outsiders do.