How different things might be if, rather than saying "I think I'm in love," we were saying "I've connected with someone in a way that makes me think I'm on the way to knowing love." Or if instead of saying "I am in love" we say "I am loving" or "I will love." Our patterns around romantic love are unlikely to change if we do not change our language.

All the work I do is built on a foundation of loving-kindness. Love illuminates matters.

Many spiritual teachers - in Buddhism, in Islam - have talked about first-hand experience of the world as an important part of the path to wisdom, to enlightenment.

One difference with the political writings, whether about feminism or class, is that the intent is to change how people think of a certain political reality; whereas with cultural criticism, the goal is to illuminate something that is already there.

Teaching Black Studies, I find that students are quick to label a black person who has grown up in a predominantly white setting and attended similar schools as "not black enough." ...Our concept of black experience has been too narrow and constricting.

Is it more important that you, as a white male, read my work and learn from it, or what you call me? I think it's more important that you read my work, reflect on it, and allow it to transform your life and your thinking in some way.

Within a capitalist consumer society, the cult of personality has the power to subsume ideas, to make the person, the personality into the product and not the work itself.