To get to a place where you could love anything you chose--not to need permission for desire--well now _that_ was freedom.

I think there's data, and then there's information that comes from data, and then there's knowledge that comes from information. And then, after knowledge, there is wisdom. I am interested in how to get from data to wisdom.

One of the monstrous things that slavery in this country caused was the breakup of families. I mean, physical labor, horrible; beatings, horrible; lynching death, all of that, horrible. But the living life of a parent who, A, has no control over what happens to your children, none. They don't belong to you. You may not even nurse them. They may be shipped off somewhere, as in "Beloved" the mother was, to be nursed by somebody who was not able to work in the fields and was a wet nurse.

Grown don't mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What's that supposed to mean? In my heart it don't mean a thing.

Say make me, remake me. You are free to do it and I am free to let you because look, look. Look where your hands are. Now.

Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief's wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul.

It was a fine cry - loud and long - but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.