Courage is not defined by those who fought and did not fall, but by those who fought, fell and rose again.

The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet.

Change is not a threat to your life, but an invitation to live.

There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep and still be counted as warriors.

My heart is moved by all I cannot save: so much has been destroyed I have to cast my lot with those who age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.

We must use what we have to invent what we desire.

The beauty of darkness is how it lets you see.

If you are trying to transform a brutalized society into one where people can live in dignity and hope, you begin with the empowering of the most powerless. You build from the ground up.

Until we know the assumptions in which we are drenched, we cannot know ourselves.

Language is power... Language can be used as a means of changing reality.

Poetry is above all a concentration of the power of language, which is the power of our ultimate relationship to everything in the universe.

You surround yourself with your pain or you avoid it and let it find you when you are trying to do other things

We do not require company. In varying degrees, it bores us, drains us, makes our eyes glaze over. Overcomes us like a steamroller. Of course, the rest of the world doesn't understand.

Hip-hop has never had boundaries - the more adventurous it is, the more popular it seems to be.

White on rice. Green on grass. Sheets on a bed. Him on her.

I do feel like I'm not entirely an insider.

Cause I am not a word, I am not a line. I am not a girl that can ever be defined

There's hope at the bottom of the biggest waterfall." ~pg 426

Brethren, do not become children in sense: but in malice be children, and in sense be perfect.

For me, it's the slow release of my ego and certain belief systems that I identify with that give me comfort and an identity, and it's scary to let go of that.

But I should like to take these things on full gallop, instead of dawdling along gaping at them. I get fearfully tired, and a very little Abbey goes a long way with me.