And this is for Colored girls who have considered suicide, but are moving to the ends of their own rainbows.

i found god in myself and i loved her i loved her fiercely

I write for young girls of color, for girls who don’t even exist yet, so that there is something there for them when they arrive. I can only change how they live, not how they think.

I'm a firm believer that language and how we use language determines how we act, and how we act then determines our lives and other people's lives.

Where there is a woman there is magic.

Creation is everything you do. Make something.

my spirit is too ancient to understand the separation of soul & gender

Right now being born a girl is to be born threatened.

Being alive and being a woman is all I got, but being colored is a metaphysical dilemma I haven't conquered yet.

I am gonna write poems til i die and when i have gotten outta this body i am gonna hang round in the wind and knock over everybody who got their feet on the ground.

When I die, I will no be guilty of having left a generation of girls behind thinking that anyone can tend to their emotional health other than themselves.

Realize your true strength when people reject you. In actual fact, they do not reject you. They only show you your real strength

Destiny is like gravity. You may stray from it a bit but it will always be there.

Art is a kind of illness.

Although I studied Dante's Inferno as a student, it wasn't until recently, while researching in Florence, that I came to appreciate the enduring influence of Dante's work on the modern world.

The major task of the twentieth century will be to explore the unconscious, to investigate the subsoil of the mind.

Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference.

[ If I wasn't making music ] I'd probably end up going to school, I never went to school. Or just give up and get my plumber's ticket and move back to Edmonton and become an alcoholic.

I've been hit on plenty of times, mostly by men with little finesse who thought what was between their legs made up for what they lacked between their ears.

Life damages us, every one. We can't escape that damage.

The life of faith is not only totally different from, but also diametrically opposite to, a life of feeling.