Steph > Steph's Quotes

“The poet or the revolutionary is there to articulate the necessity, but until the people themselves apprehend it, nothing can happen ... Perhaps it can't be done without the poet, but it certainly can't be done without the people. The poet and the people get on generally very badly, and yet they need each other. The poet knows it sooner than the people do. The people usually know it after the poet is dead; but that's all right. The point is to get your work done, and your work is to change the world.”
― James Baldwin

“Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

“there is an extraordinary power in the possession of a language.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it. Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less. No, I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

“Authors do not supply imaginations, they expect their readers to have their own, and to use it”
― Nella Larsen

“If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.”
― Audre Lorde

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
― audre lorde

“I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else's whim or to someone else's ignorance.”
― bell hooks

“If any female feels she need anything beyond herself to legitimate and validate her existence, she is already giving away her power to be self-defining, her agency.”
― bell hooks, Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics

“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.”
― bell hooks, Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work

“I am an expression of the divine, just like a peach is, just like a fish is. I have a right to be this way...I can't apologize for that, nor can I change it, nor do I want to... We will never have to be other than who we are in order to be successful...We realize that we are as ourselves unlimited and our experiences valid. It is for the rest of the world to recognize this, if they choose.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

“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. ”
― Alice Walker

“In search of my mother's garden, I found my own.”
― Alice Walker

“Writing is one of the ways I participate in transformation.”
― Toni Cade Bambara

“As a culture worker who belongs to an oppressed people my job is to make revolution irresistible.”
― Toni Cade Bambara, Conversations with Toni Cade Bambara

“Are you sure, sweetheart, that you want to be well?… Just so’s you’re sure, sweetheart, and ready to be healed, cause wholeness is no trifling matter. A lot of weight when you’re well.”
― Toni Cade Bambara , The Salt Eaters

“Write a lot and hit the streets. A writer who doesn't keep up with what's out there ain't gonna be out there.”
― Toni Cade Bambara

“Don’t bury it, use it. Don’t keep it in, give it away. Don’t turn that love in, turn that love out.”
― J. California Cooper, Some Love, Some Pain, Sometime: Stories

“Sometimes it's a struggle to get over self-love first. Sometimes in this struggle for love, we give up, or lose everything, and we still don't achieve love. Some people don't even recognize real love when it comes without being called or sought.”
― J. California Cooper, Life Is Short But Wide

“There is always some beauty in life. Look up … and get on with it. Build you a rainbow. Do it yourself! If you can’t do that, build your mind near one. Learn how to fly. Then … soar a little.”
― J. California Cooper, Some Love, Some Pain, Sometime: Stories

“My life had been peaceful, safe, quiet and restful. I had done invited trouble in and I had done put trouble out.”
― J. California Cooper, Some Love, Some Pain, Sometime: Stories

“I have been in Sorrow's kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows, with a harp and a sword in my hands.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

“I have known the joy and pain of friendship. I have served and been served. I have made some good enemies for which I am not a bit sorry. I have loved unselfishly, and I have fondled hatred with the red-hot tongs of Hell. That's living.”
― Zora Neale Hurston

“Writing is a delicious agony.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks

“I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks

“Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies.
And be it gash or gold it will not come
Again in this identical disguise.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, Annie Allen

“i found god in myself
and i loved her
i loved her fiercely”
― Ntozake Shange

“Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance

“Pheoby, yuh got tuh go there tuh know there. Yo' papa and yo' mama and nobody else can't tell yuh and show yuh. Two things everybody's got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God and they got tuh find out about livin fuh theyselves.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
― Elizabeth Appell