I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. That the speaking profits me, beyond any other effect....what I most regretted were my silences. Of what had I ever been afraid? ...Death on the other hand, is the final silence...my silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you.

The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling. . . .

There are no honest poems about dead women.

The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.

I am a bleak heroism of words that refuse to be buried alive with the liars.

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.

The transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation .