I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else's whim or to someone else's ignorance.

Secrets find a way out in sleep . . . It is the place where there is no pretense.

I believe that this nation can only heal from the wounds of racism if we all begin to love blackness. And by that I don't mean that we love only that which is best within us, but that we're also able to love that which is faltering, which is wounded, which is contradictory, incomplete.

Usually, when people talk about the "strength" of black women . . . . they ignore the reality that to be strong in the face of oppression is not the same as overcoming oppression, that endurance is not to be confused with transformation.

I often find it easier to be teaching or giving to others, and often struggle with the place of my own pleasure and joy.

I feel like there is always something trying to pull us back into sleep, that there is this sort of seductive quality in all the hedonistic pleasures that pull on us.