The strongest lesson I can teach my son is the same lesson I teach my daughter: how to be who he wishes to be for himself.

It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.

When I dare to be powerful - to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.

There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.

Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.

When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.

If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.

I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.

Tomorrow belongs to those of us who conceive of it as belonging to everyone; who lend the best of ourselves to it, and with joy.

I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.

If I cannot air this pain and alter it, I will surely die of it. That's the beginning of social protest.

If you ever looked at me once with what I know is in you, I would be your slave.

I don't teach lies, but I do not teach all I know is true.

I've never understood people who play up the artifice of music.

I think perhaps the greatest book ever written was Ulysses by James Joyce.

Ordinary people with commitment can make an extraordinary impact on the their world.

Whenever a great painter... does a work which appears to be false and lying, that falsity is very true.

To mistrust science and deny the validity of the scientific method is to resign your job as a human. You'd better go look for work as a plant or wild animal.

In the early '80s, I was blown away when I began to hear some of the earliest hip-hop songs, and I'm fascinated by all the permutations the genre has gone through.

He who truly believes that which prompts him to an action has looked upon the action to lust after it, he has committed it already in his heart.

There is creation in the eye.