For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence.

Divide and conquer must become define and empower.

We must wake up knowing we have work to do and go to bed knowing we've done it.

You cannot use someone else's fire. You can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe that you have it.

Difference is that raw and powerful connection from which our personal power is forged... We have been taught to either ignore our differences or to view them as causes for separation and suspicion rather than as forces for change. Without community, there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression... Survival is learning to take our difference and make them strengths.

I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.

I have come to believe that caring for myself is not self-indulgent. Caring for myself is an act of survival.