bell hooks

"Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape."

"The message received from the mass media is that knowledge makes love less compelling; that it is ignorance that gives love its erotic and transgressive edge."

"There is no life to be found in violence. Every act of violence brings us closer to death. Whether it's the mundane violence we do to our bodies by overeating toxic food or drink or the extreme violence of child abuse, domestic warfare, life-threatening poverty, addiction, or state terrorism."

"The greatest movement for social justice our country has ever known is the civil rights movement and it was totally rooted in a love ethic."

"Living simply makes loving simple."

"To be changed by ideas was pure pleasure. But to learn ideas that ran counter to values and beliefs learned at home was to place oneself at risk, to enter the danger zone. Home was the place where I was forced to conform to someone else’s image of who and what I should be. School was the place where I could forget that self and, through ideas, reinvent myself."

"Once you do away with the idea of people as fixed, static entities, then you see that people can change, and there is hope."

"feminism is for everybody"