Freedom is choosing your responsibility. It's not having no responsibilitie s; it's choosing the ones you want.

Nobody loved her and she wouldn’t have liked it if they had, she considered love a serious disability.

I like marriage. The idea.

Womanists is what black feminists used to call themselves. Very much so. They were not the same thing. And also the relationship with men. Historically, black women have always sheltered their men because they were out there, and they were the ones that were most likely to be killed.

Love is never any better than the lover.

Can't nothing heal without pain, you know.

And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life. We substituted good grammar for intellect; we switched habits to simulate maturity; we rearranged lies and called it truth, seeing in the new pattern of an old idea the Revelation and the Word.