The enemy is not men. The enemy is the concept of patriarchy, the concept of patriarchy as the way to run the world or do things.

When a child walks in the room, your child or anybody else’s child, do your eyes light up? That’s what they’re looking for.

All of us--all who knew her--felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we had a sense of humor. Her inarticulateness made us believe we were eloquent. Her poverty kept us generous. Even her waking dreams we used--to silence our own nightmares.

There's a contract that I make between myself, the author, and the reader. I have to figure out how to give the reader certain powers of recognition, or his own knowledge, his own feelings, but I provide them, so we're working together.

I am in the position of judging people by the best they've ever done rather than the worst.

A little black girl yearns for the blue eyes of a little white girl, and the horror at the heart of her yearning is exceeded only by the evil of fulfillment

Beloved, you are my sister, you are my daughter, you are my face; you are me.