We must recognize and nurture the creative parts of each other without always understanding what will be created.

For we have built into all of us, old blueprints of expectation and response, old structures of oppression and these must be altered at the same time that we alter the living condition which are the result of those structures. For the master's tool will never dismantle the master's house.

Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me.

I learned to read from Mrs. Augusta Baker, the children's librarian. ... If that was the only good deed that lady ever did in her life, may she rest in peace. Because that deed saved my life, if not sooner, then later, when sometimes the only thing I had to hold on to was knowing I could read.

...my experience with people who tried to label me was that they usually did it to either dismiss me or use me.

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

Unless one lives and loves in the trenches, it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless.