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.

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.

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.

Each time you love, love as deeply as if it were forever.

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.

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

When I use my strength in the service of my vision it makes no difference whether or not I am afraid.

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.

Art is not living. It is the use of living.

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.

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.

There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.

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

The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot.

In our work and in our living, we must recognize that difference is a reason for celebration and growth, rather than a reason for destruction.

It's a struggle but that's why we exist, so that another generation of Lesbians of color will not have to invent themselves, or their history, all over again.