All Quotes

"I would say I’ve spent my whole life making up fairy tales, poetry, etc. I started writing to see myself in print when I was in high school. I had a couple of poems published in my high school magazine. Once I got out of college I started seriously submitting work (and collecting a good number of rejections), eventually the rejections became acceptances around 1994."

"Everything around me, the news, my past, my hopes for the future, all the positive and negative things that humans do to each other and the planet. I moved from NYC in 2014 to Arizona and went from a city kid to being surrounded by mountains and nature. The mountains and desert have an overall settling effect on me which help me focus."

"Write, write, write. Write every day, even if only for a few minutes. I believe most writing happens in our subconscious so if we sit down each day the subconscious gets to know, ‘ah so I can show up now’ and it will pour out what it’s been mulling over."

"Know that even when you’re not putting words on paper/computer you’re writing. Living is writing. Everything we do feeds creativity, even in the most un-obvious ways."

"Don’t edit while writing first draft, just get it out. This is a rule I often struggle with because I know the quality I want, but I also know it’s important to write it from beginning to end and the editor mind doesn’t help that for me."

"Read (all kinds of writing, even the kind you don’t do), listen to music, go to art shows. There is such energy from creating and it’s important to feed all the senses."

"Once your work is as good as you can make it Send It Out! Don’t spend time wondering if it will be accepted or not, just get it out the house and start something new. If it comes back and you can make it better, do it. If you can’t make it better, Send It Out anyway. We writers are not the best judge of our work. For sure, your writing will get better the more you write, not necessarily rewriting the same piece."

"All of the books I mentioned above are available as print and/or eBooks. The links are on my website"

"Royal Mail is a great British brand with a long and proud history.**]"

"Royal Mail is a great British brand with a long and proud history. Now is the time to ensure it has a successful future, too, working in partnership with our employees, customers and all our stakeholders to continue to modernise Royal Mail and deliver the high standards of service our customers rightly expect.”**]"

". "I used to be on first-name terms with every shop owner in the village," she would say.**]"

"I want to see things done with creativity and lots of consultations, and not being decided by people who’ve been politicians their entire life, but by people… that you would like to be your neighbour."

"I was nurtured by Ralph Farquhar and then, later, by Sara Finney-Johnson and Vida Spears, two black women. So, I actually was nurtured by my culture, in a safe environment that allowed me to build my confidence. And Debbie Allen was one of my mentors, along with Stan Lathan."

"I often attribute my screenwriting to journalism because they drill in the who, what, when, where and why - but we really need to land on that why. That's what I've been exploring in my writing for many years and trying to get better at."

"Sometimes, we only get to know someone as one aspect of who they are. Then you start peeling back the layers and understanding more and more about who they are - their vulnerabilities, their fears, their joys, all those other words that equal humanity."

"I'm hoping that the legacy of 'Girlfriends' is just that you can enjoy and connect to Joan, Maya, Toni, Lynn, and William and see your humanity reflected in theirs. That's what I'm hoping that it did."

"For me, I start at the place that my characters are human. I start at the place that they are onions that are layered and meant to be peeled, just as we as human beings are."

"Technology has changed our industry, and I think that's opened up different revenue streams and ways to make money and distribute television. It's made the global conversation easier, quicker."

"There were only about 30 Black kids in my class. It was the 1980s and there was still a lot of racism, a lot of isolation, separation. I remember being targeted in certain classes,"

"The high school environment was very traumatic for me, but it was a powerful learning experience. It wasn’t easy, but it made me in a lot of ways. Seeing what is right and what is wrong and not backing down from that and refusing to have my voice stifled."

"If a gay person doesn’t have healthcare, or a job that provides healthcare, that’s economic—plus gender, plus LGBT. It is all intertwined,All the issues hold high importance. When everything is not balanced the way it should be in society, you have a lack of justice. I could leave CAF someday and work in affordable housing because it is all tied together.”"

"“I had left an abusive marriage. I did not get involved with women because of this, but after leaving the relationship I found I was attracted to one of my co-workers,”"

"I gathered up books and all the free newspapers,” she said. “I found Blacklines [which was merged with En la Vida to form the online publication Identity] and read it from front to back. I called every number in the resource section that seemed like it was for Black lesbian women. The only one that called back was Affinity, and that’s how I became involved with them. I went to a meeting, scared to death—drove down from Lincoln Park to 62nd and Indiana. My life was changed from that point."

"“I did not come out in the bars. I came out into activism."

"You can come into social justice work early or late,“I landed this first executive director position without a degree, but I had a lot of experience, a lot of passion, some skills and I was given a chance.” For those wanting to follow a similar path i suggests volunteering, taking classes and networking: “Go to events, meet people, get outside your comfort zone. And follow your passion."

"Journalism is my good trouble,I implore you to find your good trouble.”"

"How can individual people make change?” A “Just look at your talents.”"

"Each of us is bending it (in our own way), We are each are using our resources. Journalism is my way of bending the arc ."

"I wanted to be a professional witness to the struggles against white supremacy. It’s up to all of us to use our God given talents in any way we can … Democracy is fragile. We must all do our parts to protect it.”"

"“The threat of white supremacy courses through the halls of Congress, All of this seems so scary.”"

"The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around … But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark can you see the stars."

"“I focused on my purpose, My ancestors came here so I could pose that question."

"“When I think about Martin Luther King and all that he gave this country, he would want society challenging itself, looking bluntly at itself, “Where in your life are you fighting white supremacy?”"

"Why do you keep doing this, risking your own personal safety and comfort?” “How did you go on? How did you find the courage to wake up each day?”"

"There are going to be times where you run into people who question your decisions,You need to just be ready to push back.”"

"Proudly doing our bit"

"How can you ask me when i want to get married when you have yet to ask me if i will marry you?”"

"Think with your head and not your heart. Love with your heart and not your head."

"had cooked bacon until crisp and then crumbled it and set it aside while he sautéed onion, pepper and garlic until tender. He had then combined bread crumbs, oregano, grated parmesan cheese and the sautéed vegetables with the fresh chopped clams he’d gotten from the supermarket’s fish department. He filled the shells with the mixture, sprinkled them with parsley and paprika and, after drizzling them with virgin olive oil, placed them in the hot oven until the tops were browned and the mixture bubbly. The Caesar salad with."

"after a parent-teacher conference that his firefighter and DEA agent brothers-in-law lowered the hammer: No devices were allowed whenever they sat down to eat as a family. And that included when they dined out. They placed time limits on their computers in addition to the already installed parental controls, and they had to leave their cell phones on their parents’ dresser before retiring for bed."

"However, tonight will be different because we’re serving wine plus Grandpa’s special Christmas punch, which has anyone who drinks it believing they can see into the future."

"Leah had not realized until she sat down at the table with her book club friends that she'd been waiting all year for this moment. To reunite with women who understood and didn't judge her, and women whom she could call friends.”"

"Motherhood is such a beautiful journey. It’s so perfect. I love every bit of it. I love my baby boy to bits and pieces. Everything I do is for him and yes, I am very private. I feel like my privacy is me protecting my peace, and I have so much contentment in my little bubble, and I only come out when I have to do something and go straight back in. This is where I just shut out the noise and just live in my little bubble with my people, and that’s where my happiness lies."

"Can I add something about time? Clearly this year’s centennial is a significant landmark, but it’s not the only date we should be thinking of. The federal Voting Rights Act, which became law in 1965, was incredibly important too, because the passage of that legislation supposedly guaranteed the franchise to African-American women — since even after ratification of the 19th Amendment, stifling Jim Crow regulations throughout the South had kept the vote from women, as much as they did for Black men."

"To me, there is an emotional connection to it. I have a visceral memory of the first time I went into a voting booth with my mother. I couldn’t have been more than 3, because the muscle memory says I was reaching up for her hand. We went down into the bowels of the Washington Heights Library, in Upper Manhattan, and there was the voting booth with its old-fashioned pull curtain. This was long before anybody ever said the word “suffrage” to me. But nearly 50 years later, when I started studying this stuff seriously in graduate school, I thought, “Yes, that’s what I remember.” Both of my grandmothers were Black Southern suffragists in the early 1900s, and their beliefs and activities remained important family legacies through several generations"

"I would say it is not one person nor one event, but the scarcely recorded efforts of anonymous women of all races, educational and economic levels who, for decades, talked with neighbors, held meetings, challenged their fathers, sons, husbands and employers — often putting themselves in physical and economic jeopardy to do so. They are the unknown heroes of the movement."

"One of the things that you see in many movements is that there is sort of a simplistic assumption that we must avoid, which is that progress moves forward in straight lines. And boy, does it ever not go in straight lines. It twists back, it doubles over itself. And it crosses many categories, such as economics, gender and race. That’s something that we may forget, and perhaps it goes against Dr. Martin Luther King’s precept that the arc of justice always bends forward"

"I often think of the women, my grandmother among them, who wore white dresses to protest the denial of their political empowerment. There were echoes of that symbolic garb during the campaigns of Shirley Chisholm, and in the glorious display of white pantsuits worn by the record number of multiracial, multicultural women who went to Congress as result of the 2018 election. I smiled when I saw them!"

"My suffragist grandmother feels close to me today because her portrait still hangs in my apartment. The poster from the first “Afro-American Women and the Vote” conference also hangs on my wall, a testament to Adella and others like her."

"I've always loved fashion and the art of standing out, using clothes as a form of self-expression."