We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes a habit because what was native has been stolen from us, the love of Black women for each other.

When you reach out and touch other human beings, it doesn't matter whether you call it therapy or teaching or poetry.

... it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence.

If you do not learn to hate you will never be lonely enough to love easily nor will you always be brave, although it does not grow any easier. Do not pretend to convenient beliefs, even when they are righteous; you will never be able to defend your city while shouting.

I have no creative use for guilt, yours or my own. Guilt is only another way of avoiding informed action, of buying time out of the pressing need to make clear choices, out of the approaching storm that can feed the earth as well as bend the trees.

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.

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