Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.

I feel sad that we have allowed these knee-jerk feminists who want to act like it's a struggle against men...but again that's the least politically developed strand of feminism.

[O]ne of the most vital ways we sustain ourselves is by building communities of resistance, places where we know we are not alone.

It was the world of Southern, rural, black growing up, of folks sitting on porches day and night, of folks calling your mama, 'cause you walked by and didn't speak, and of the switch waiting when you got home so that you could be taught some manners. It was a world of single black older women schoolteachers, dedicated, tough; they had taught your mama, her sisters, and her friends. They knew your people in ways that you never would and shared their insight, keeping us in touch with generations. It was a world where we had a history.

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.

Most of us find it difficult to accept a definition of love that says we are never loved in a context where there is abuse.

Because we have learned to believe negativity is more realistic, it appears more real than any positive voice.