I Try To See Every Day As

Bringing The Gifts That My Ancestors Gave, I Am The Dream And The Hope Of The Slave. I Rise. I Rise. I Rise.

Words Are Things. You Must Be Careful, Careful About Calling People Out Of Their Names, Using Racial Pejoratives And Sexual Pejoratives And All That Ignorance. Don’t Do That. Some Day We’ll Be Able To Measure The Power Of Words. I Think They Are Things. They Get On The Walls. They Get In Your Wallpaper. They Get In Your Rugs, In Your Upholstery, And Your Clothes, And Finally In To You.

We Need To Remember That We Are All Created Creative And Can Invent New Scenarios As Frequently As They Are Needed.

I Was Raped When I Was Very Young. I Told My Brother The Name Of The Person Who Had Done It. Within A Few Days The Man Was Killed. In My Child's Mind--seven And A Half Years Old--i Thought My Voice Had Killed Him. So I Stopped Talking For Five Years.

I've Never Had A Dislike For Men. I've Been Badly Treated By Some. But I've Been Loved Greatly By Some. I Married A Lot Of Them.