“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”
“Hard times require furious dancing. Each of us is proof.”
“No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.”
“Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.”
“In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect.”
“The most important question in the world is, ‘Why is the child crying?’”
“Be nobody’s darling; be an outcast. Take the contradictions of your life and wrap around you like a shawl, to parry stones, to keep you warm.”
“Whenever you are creating beauty around you, you are restoring your own soul.”
“Don’t wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any happiness you get, you’ve got to make yourself.”
“Look closely at the present you are constructing: it should look like the future you are dreaming.”
“I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart.”
“The most healthy response to life is joy.”
“It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one’s children will become than for the children one’s ‘mature’ critics often are.”
“Time moves slowly, but passes quickly.”
“The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.”
“I am an expression of the divine, just like a peach is, just like a fish is.”
“The gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of society or one’s people that has not previously been taken into account.”
“To acknowledge our ancestors means we are aware that we did not make ourselves.”
“Activism is my rent for living on the planet.”
“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.”
“We are the ones we have been waiting for.”
“Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.”
“If you want to have a life worth living, a life that expresses your deepest feelings and emotions and cares and dreams, you have to fight for it.”
“What the mind doesn’t understand, it worships or fears.”
“Healing begins where the wound was made.”
“Not only will your teachers appear, but they will cook new foods for you.”
“How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers’ names.”
“Some people don’t understand that writing is also witnessing.”
“Resistance is the secret of joy!”
“It is natural to want to wish away the suffering.”
“Any God I ever found in the church, I brought in myself.”
“Everything is a lesson we can learn from.”
“All history is current; all injustice continues on some level, somewhere in the world.”
“Helped are those who are content to be themselves; they will never lack mystery in their lives and the joys of self-discovery will be constant.”
“The more I wonder, the more I love.”
“The way forward is with a broken heart.”
“I believe we are capable of growing beyond whatever conditions we find ourselves in.”
“To love someone is to see a miracle invisible to others.”
“I think writing really helps you heal yourself.”
“With each passing day, I am more deeply convinced that the struggle for liberation in the world must begin with the liberation of women.”
“The nature of this flower is to bloom.”
“Whenever you feel lost, just remember: the Earth is carrying you.”
“I’m mad about the waste that happens when someone can’t connect with their calling.”
“The soul doesn’t just absorb pain. It eventually releases it as wisdom.”
“A grown child is a dangerous thing if it is not allowed to grow into its own nature.”
“Surviving is important. Thriving is elegant.”
“There is nothing more important than understanding your own history.”
“Art is the mirror held up to nature.”
“Truth never damages a cause that is just.”
“Creation itself is enough.”