“...one cannot but wonder how an environment can make people despair and sit idle and then, by changing the conditions, one can transform the same people into matchless performers.”

“The poor themselves can create a poverty-free world. All we have to do is to free them from the chains that we have put around them!”

“The system we have built refuses to recognize people. Only credit cards are recognized. Drivers' licenses are recognized. But not people. People haven't any use for faces anymore, it seems. They ar...”

“To me, the poor are like Bonsai trees. When you plant the best seed of the tallest tree in a six-inch deep flower pot, you get a perfect replica of the tallest tree, but it is only inches tall. The...”

“UN studies conducted in more than forty developing countries show that the birth rate falls as women gain equality... I believe income-earning opportunities that empower poor women ... will have mo...”

“Changes are products of intensive efforts.”

“The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't li...”

“I wonder if fears ever really go away, or if they just lose their power over us.”

“Fear is all in the mind”

“MORNINGTIDEThe wonderful works of morningtidebring the sight of luminous whiteness,a breathing whimsyamong wind-tossed sprigs of green.”

“Tender," she said again. "Tender is kind and gentle. It's also sore, like the skin around an injury.”

“Nothing is so strong as gentleness. Nothing is so gentle as real strength.”

“No black woman writer in this culture can write "too much". Indeed, no woman writer can write "too much"...No woman has ever written enough.”

“When you reduce a woman to writing, she makes you think of a thousand other women”

“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”