Like running trying to live a good life has to hurt a little bit, or we're not running hard enough, not really trying.

As I think about anyone or anything -- whether history or literature or my father or political organizations or a poem or a film -- as I seek to evaluate the potentiality, the life-supportive commitment and possibilities of anyone or any thing, the decisive question is always where is the love?

suicide is absolute, and if you think you will survive by hiding who you really are, you are sadly misled: there is no such thing as partial or intermittent suicide. You can only survive if you - who you really are - do survive.

To begin is no more agony than opening your hand.

I am a feminist, and what that means to me is much the same as the meaning of the fact that I am Black: it means that I must undertake to love myself and to respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect.

I am a stranger, learning to love the strangers around me

Like running trying to live a good life has to hurt a little bit, or we're not running hard enough, not really trying.