On a spiritual level, it's as though with my sighted eye I see what's before me, and with my unsighted eye I see what's hidden. It's illuminated life more than darkened it.
Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.
I love us so incredibly, insanely deeply; it's almost unbearable to see what we do to ourselves.
Well, I think indigenous peoples have ways of living on the Earth that they've had forever. And they've been overrun by organized religion, which has had a lot of money and power.
Tea to the English is really a picnic indoors.
For a long time, I thought I was ugly and disfigured. This made me shy and timid, and I often reacted to insults that were not intended.
People really had a problem with my disinterest in submission. They had a problem with my intellect, and they had a problem with my choice of lovers. They had a problem with my choice of everything.
I never have an intended audience. I just write, you know.
Language is an intrinsic part of who we are and what has, for good or evil, happened to us.
Howard Zinn was magical as a teacher. Witty, irreverent, and wise, he loved what he was teaching and clearly wanted his students to love it, also.
I can imagine in years to come that my papers and memorabilia, my journals and letters, will find themselves always in the company of people who care about many of the things I do.
I started writing as a child. But I didn't think of myself actually writing until I was in college. And I had gone to Africa as a sophomore or something - no, maybe junior - and wrote a book of poems. And that was my beginning. I published that book.
You don't always have to be doing something. You can just be, and that's plenty.
The infinite faith I have in people's ability to understand anything that makes sense has always been justified, finally, by their behavior.
Poetry is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution, and the raising of consciousness.
It's a tragedy, in a way, that Americans are brought up to think that they cannot feel for other people and other beings just because they are different. They think they're different. It's very limiting.
The gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of society or one's people that has not previously been taken into account.
I made my first white women friends in college; they loved me and were loyal to our friendship, but I understood, as they did, that they were white women and that whiteness mattered.
Meditation has been a loyal friend to me. It has helped me write my books.
My mother had bought a sewing machine for me. When I went away to college, she gave me a sewing machine, a typewriter and a suitcase, and my mother made $17 a week working as a maid 12 hours a day, and she did that for me.
