I remember how being young and black and gay and lonely felt. A lot of it was fine, feeling I had the truth and the light and the key, but a lot of it was purely hell.

Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare.

I soon discovered that if you keep your mouth shut, people are apt to believe you know everything, and they begin to feel freer and freer to tell you anything, anxious to show that they know something, too.

Whenever a conscious Black woman raises her voice on issues central to her existence, somebody is going to call her strident, because they don't want to hear about it, nor us. I refuse to be silenced and I refuse to be trivialized, even if I do not say what I have to say perfectly.

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

Attend me, hold me in your muscular flowering arms, protect me from throwing any part of myself away.

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