Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Who I am is what fulfills me and fulfills the vision I have of the world.
Well, I do not want to be tolerated, nor misnamed. I want to be recognized.
We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings.
You'd better name yourself, because, if you don't others will do it for you.
I am a bleak heroism of words that refuse to be buried alive with the liars.
The sixties were characterized by a heady belief in instantaneous solutions.
It does not pay to cherish symbols when the substance lies so close at hand.
The more I use my strength in the service of my vision the less I am afraid.
what you hear in my voice is fury, not suffering. Anger, not moral authority
I am a reflection of my mother’s secret poetry as well as of her hidden angers
We must wake up knowing we have work to do and go to bed knowing we've done it.
The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot.
To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society
For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence.
We cannot settle for the pretenses of connection, or for the parodies of self-love.
Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak.
The transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation .
There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.
Women on trains have a life that is exactly livable the precision of days flashing past
Only by learning to live in harmony with your contradictions can you keep it all afloat.
Say what you have to say now! Don't wait until you're sending blips from the other side.
In other words, I would be giving in to a myth of sameness which I think can destroy us.
I started writing because I had a need inside of me to create something that was not there
Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one's own actions or lack of action.
Even the smallest victory is never to be taken for granted. Each victory must be applauded.
Out of my flesh that hungers and my mouth that knows comes the shape I am seeking for reason.
Those of us forged in the crucibles of difference know that survival is not an academic skill.
I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.
I am Black because I come from the earth's inside now take my word for jewel in the open light.
I cannot shut you out the way I shut the others out, so maybe I can destroy you. Must destroy you?
stoicism and silence does not serve us nor our communities, only the forces of things as they are.
Pain is important: how we evade it, how we succumb to it, how we deal with it, how we transcend it.
How much of this truth can I bear to see and still live unblinded? How much of this pain can I use?
I agreed to take part in a New York University Institute for Humanities conference a year ago. . . .
The difference between poetry and rhetoric is being ready to kill yourself instead of your children.
When I use my strength in the service of my vision it makes no difference whether or not I am afraid.
But the true feminist deals out of a lesbian consciousness whether or not she ever sleeps with women.
Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare.
Attend me, hold me in your muscular flowering arms, protect me from throwing any part of myself away.
I am my best work - a series of road maps, reports, recipes, doodles, and prayers from the front lines.
If I cannot air this pain and alter it, I will surely die of it. That's the beginning of social protest.
I am a Black Lesbian Feminist Warrior Poet Mother, stronger for all my identities, and I am indivisible.
Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.
Every Black woman in America lives her life somewhere along a wide curve of ancient and unexpressed angers.
Guilt and defensiveness are bricks in a wall against which we all flounder; they serve none of our futures.
Hopefully, we can learn from the 60s that we cannot afford to do our enemies work by destroying each other.
The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings.
I can't really define it in sexual terms alone although our sexuality is so energizing why not enjoy it too?
I have come to believe that caring for myself is not self-indulgent. Caring for myself is an act of survival.
Black women sharing close ties with each other, politically or emotionally, are not the enemies of Black men.