“what you hear in my voice is fury, not suffering. Anger, not moral authority”

“I know the anger lies inside of me like I know the beat of my heart and the taste of my spit. It is easier to be furious than to be yearning. Easier to crucify myself in you than to take on the threatening universe of whiteness by admitting that we are worth wanting each other.”

“If you come as softlyAs wind within the treesYou may hear what I hearSee what sorrow sees.If you come as lightlyAs threading dewI will take you gladlyNor ask more of you.You may sit beside meSilent as a breathOnly those who stay deadShall remember death.And if you come I will be silentNor speak harsh words to you.I will not ask you why, now.Or how, or what you do.We shall sit here, softlyBeneath two different yearsAnd the rich earth between usShall drink our tears.”

“What makes her eyes slide o of mine? What does she see that angers her so, or infuriates her, or disgusts her? Why do I want to break her face o where her eyes do not meet mine? Why does she wear my sister's face? My daughter's mouth turned down about to suck itself in? The eyes of a furious and rejected lover? Why do I dream I cradle you at night? Divide your limbs between the food bowls of my least favorite animals? Keep vigil to you night after terrible night, wondering? Oh sister, where is that dark rich land we wanted to wander through together? . . . [W]hose future image have we destroyed --your face or mine-- without either how shall I look again at both --lacking either is lacking myself.”

“What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence.”

“[Speaking] is never without fear; of visibility, of the harsh light of scrutiny and perhaps judgment, of pain, of death. But we have lived through all of those already, in silence, except death. And I remind myself all the time now, that if I were to have been born mute, and had maintained an oath of silence my whole life for safety, I would still have suffered, and I would still die.”

“Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one’s own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge. Yet all too often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for defensiveness destructive of communication; it becomes a device to protect ignorance and the continuation of things the way they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness.”