Writing about people helps us to understand them, and understanding them helps us to accept them as part of ourselves.
I’ve found, in my own writing, that a little hatred, keenly directed, is a useful thing.
It no longer bothers me that I may be constantly searching for father figures; by this time, I have found several and dearly enjoyed knowing them all.
I had assumed that the Earth, the spirit of the Earth, noticed exceptions-those who wantonly damage it and those who do not. But the Earth is wise. It has given itself into the keeping of all, and all are therefore accountable.
I can be almost terminally grief-stricken because things are so dire, but at the same, there’s a real lightheartednes s about just the recoverability of life, of how things change, how they’re not the same, ever again.
Even as I hold you, I am letting you go.
I believe God is everything, say Shug. Everything that is or ever was or ever will be. And when you can feel that, and be happy to feel that, you’ve found It.
It is natural to want to have a future.
We will be ourselves and free, or die in the attempt. Harriet Tubman was not our great-grandmother for nothing.
Anybody can observe the Sabbath, but making it holy surely takes the rest of the week.
For in the end, freedom is a personal and lonely battle; and one faces down fears of today so that those of tomorrow might be engaged.
It’s so clear that you have to cherish everyone. I think that’s what I get from these older black women, that every soul is to be cherished, that every flower Is to bloom.
Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn’t matter. I’m not sure a bad person can write a good book, If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for.
Surely the earth can be saved by all the people who insist on love.
Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to git attention we do, except walk?
As I get older, I realize that the thing I value the most is good-heartednes s.
I don’t know if you actually get something out of writing poetry. I think poetry is an autonomous muse that decides to come and sit on your couch.
My writing is very organic. It’s what I am. My mother says I was writing before I was crawling. I wrote in the dirt with a twig. So I think of it as something that’s very essential to my being.
What I am really interested in is that I want people to be thinking in other ways – to stop thinking they have to remain glued to a system that has failed and to ideas about society that’s necessarily about being run by Democrats or Republicans.
I think that indigenous women’s wisdom is crucial. So much of the care of the Earth has come from the mothers. I think it’s imperative we turn to their wisdom in how to take care of the planet.