Well, I do not want to be tolerated, nor misnamed. I want to be recognized

Only by learning to live in harmony with your contradictions can you keep it all afloat

Tomorrow belongs to those of us who conceive of it as belonging to everyone; who lend the best of ourselves to it, and with joy.

Unless one lives and loves in the trenches, it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless.

Even the smallest victory is never to be taken for granted. Each victory must be applauded.

Change is the immediate responsibility of each of us, wherever and however we are standing, in whatever arena we choose

Any discussion among women about racism must include the recognition and use of anger. This discussion must be direct and creative because it is crucial

The failure of academic feminists to recognize difference as a crucial strength is a failure to reach beyond the first patriarchal lesson. In our world, divide and conquer must become define and empower

Some women wait for themselves around the next corner and call the empty spot peace, but the opposite of living is only not living, and the stars do not care.

Every woman I have ever loved has left her print upon me, where I loved some invaluable piece of myself apart from me — so different that I had to stretch and grow in order to recognize her. And in that growing, we came to separation, that place where work begins.

I know that my people cannot possibly profit from the oppression of any other group which seeks the right to peaceful existence

We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes a habit because what was native has been stolen from us, the love of Black women for each other

Black women are programmed to define ourselves within this male attention and to compete with each other for it rather than to recognize and move upon our common interests.

I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We’ve been taught that silence would save us, but it won’t

Revolution is not a one time event

I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own

It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.

We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired

As a Black lesbian mother in an interracial marriage, there was usually some part of me guaranteed to offend everybody’s comfortable prejudices of who I should be

For Black women as well as Black men, it is axiomatic that if we do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by others — for their use and to our detriment

How are you practicing what you preach—whatever you preach, and who is exactly listening?

We are all more blind to what we have than to what we have not

Tenses are a way of ordering the chaos around time.

What better way is there to police the streets of a minority community than to turn one generation against the other?

I cannot shut you out the way I shut the others out, so maybe I can destroy you. Must destroy you?

Survival is the greatest gift of love

Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak

How much of this truth can I bear to see and still live unblinded? How much of this pain can I use

Next time, ask: What’s the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare

Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it’s personal. And the world won’t end.

We do not need to become each other in order to work together

You cannot, you cannot use someone else’s fire. You can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe that you have it.

what you hear in my voice is fury, not suffering. Anger, not moral authority

I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives here. See whose face it wears

Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me

We must wake up knowing we have work to do and go to bed knowing we’ve done it.

When I dare to be powerful to use my strength in the service of my vision then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid

Your silence will not protect you.

Life is very short and what we have to do must be done in the now

For to survive in the mount of this dragon we call America, we have had to learn this first and most vital lesson – that we were never meant to survive. Not as human beings

It is not the destiny of Black America to repeat white America’s mistakes. But we will, if we mistake the trappings of success in a sick society for the signs of a meaningful life

I learned so much from listening to people. And all I knew was, the only thing I had was honesty and openness

But, on the other hand, I get bored with racism too and recognize that there are still many things to be said about a Black person and a White person loving each other in a racist society

Oppressed peoples are always being asked to stretch a little more, to bridge the gap between blindness and humanity.

If they cannot love and resist at the same time, they probably will not survive.

Unacknowledged class differences rob women of each others’ energy and creative insight

Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before

The difference between poetry and rhetoric is being ready to kill yourself instead of your children

Without community, there is no liberation

I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood

If you can’t change reality, change your perceptions of it.

Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me. I am who I am, doing what I came to do, acting upon you like a drug or a chisel to remind you of your me-ness, as I discover you in myself

If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive

Without community, there is no liberation

Life is very short and what we have to do must be done in the now

There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.

Self-care is not about self-indulgence, it is about self-preservation

I am deliberate and afraid of nothing

The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never allow us to bring about genuine change.

I have come to believe that caring for myself is not self-indulgent. Caring for myself is an act of survival

When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak

I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own

It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences

Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.

When I dare to be powerful – to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.