I'm grateful that, after an early life of being silenced, sometimes violently, I grew up to have a voice, circumstances that will always bind me to the rights of the voiceless.

There is no one as dangerous as he or she who has nothing to lose.

Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go.

A book is a heart that only beats in the chest of another.

To be hopeful means to be uncertain about the future, to be tender toward possibilities, to be dedicated to change all the way down to the bottom of your heart.

Worry is a way to pretend that you have knowledge or control over what you don't--and it surprises me, even in myself, how much we prefer ugly scenarios to the pure unknown.

Joy doesn't betray but sustains activism. And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated and isolated, joy is a fine initial act of insurrection.

Politics is pervasive. Everything is political and the choice to be "apolitical" is usually just an endorsement of the status quo and the unexamined life.

Memory, even in the rest of us, is a shifting, fading, partial thing, a net that doesn't catch all the fish by any means and sometimes catches butterflies that don't exist.

Every minute of every hour of every day you are making the world, just as you are making yourself, and you might as well do it with generosity and kindness and style.

Revolution is as unpredictable as an earthquake and as beautiful as spring. Its coming is always a surprise, but its nature should not be.

But he had turned, little by little, a disturbance into words, he had made a pillow of old words, for his head.

Going to work every day was like my hair was on fire and all I had to put it out was a hammer.

I’ve heard that sometimes a version of you must die before another more enlightened version can be born. I think that’s true after watching the corpse of myself walk around.

Well, bloody noses." I hug his coat tighter. "Those are definitely hot.

Be yourself!What harm can it do?

We led with our conviction rather than rational, because rational said it was impossible.

The first time I ever saw your face, I thought the sun rose in your eyes and the moon and the stars were the gifts you gave to the dark and empty sky, my love.

I believe in blood, sweat and tears.

Symmetry is overrated. Overrated is symmetry.

If you're going to be able to look back on something and laugh about it, you might as well laugh about it now.