I began to understand with a terrible sureness that we teach what we need to learn and write what we need to know.

Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.

God may be in the details, but the goddess is in the questions. Once we begin to ask them, there's no turning back.

We've begun to raise daughters more like sons... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.

Far too many people are looking for the right person, instead of trying to be the right person.

Law and justice are not always the same. When they aren't, destroying the law may be the first step toward changing it.

Each individual woman's body demands to be accepted on its own terms.

No man can call himself liberal, or radical, or even a conservative advocate of fair play, if his work depends in any way on the unpaid or underpaid labor of women at home, or in the office.

The purpose of feminism is to free the uniqueness of the individual and to understand that inside each of us is a unique human being who is a combination of heredity and environment.

Superwoman is the adversary of the women's movement.

A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.

We get the odd notion that God is showing mercy because Jesus died. No. Jesus died because God is showing mercy.

In myself I am nothing. It all comes from God and the Virgin Mary.

The thing we tell of can never be found be seeking, yet only seekers find it.

I always wished my dad was there to intimidate my boyfriends or something. It's supposed to be your dad giving your guys friends the stink-eye for sneaking beer through your house, not your mom.

You're going to find this hard to believe, but cops aren't required to carry emergency condoms." Joe Morelli

Love sees all; hate is blind.

So many old and lovely things are stored in the world's attic because we don't want them around us and we don't dare throw them out.

I'm accountable - this sounds emo - to black American writing, Southern writing, Southern black American writing, American writing and my people. That's kind of what keeps me accountable.

The information was correct but the interpretations were not.

Unto us all our days are love's anniversaries, each one In turn hath ripened something of our happiness.