“The point isn’t to stay fixed in any role, but to be committed to movement. That’s what I like about notions in Islamic mysticism that say, Are you ready to cut off your head? It’s like asking, Are you ready to make whatever move is necessary for union with the divine? And that those moves may be quite different from what people think they should be.”
“If I were really asked to define myself, I wouldn’t start with race; I wouldn’t start with blackness; I wouldn’t start with gender; I wouldn’t start with feminism. I would start with stripping down to what fundamentally informs my life, which is that I’m a seeker on the path. I think of feminism, and I think of anti-racist struggles as part of it. But where I stand spiritually is, steadfastly, on a path about love.”
―bell hooks, “Agents of Change: An Interview with bell hooks by Helen Tworkov” in Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Fall 1992
