Once you do away with the idea of people as fixed, static entities, then you see that people can change, and there is hope.

It is important for this country to make its people so obsessed with their own liberal individualism that they do not have time to think about a world larger than self.

... the outcome of the Clarence Thomas hearings and his subsequent appointment to the Supreme Court shows how misguided, narrow notions of racial solidarity that suppress dissent and critique can lead black folks to support individuals who will not protect their rights.

I'm tired of the naked, raped, beaten black woman body. I want to see an image of black femaleness that alters our universe in some way.

The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control.

One of the most subversive institutions in the United States is the public library.

I think we are obsessed in the U.S. with the personal, in ways that blind us to more important issues of life. I just think if we could take all the obsession with the personal (inaudible), and personal judgment and have people be concerned about the environment, what a different world we would live in.