Pearl Cleage Quotes

...no woman can love a weak man hard enough to make him strong.

We danced too wild, and we sang too long, and we hugged too hard, and we kissed too sweet, and howled just as loud as we wanted to howl, because by now we were all old enough to know that what looks like crazy on an ordinary day looks a lot like love if you catch it in the moonlight.

Loneliness is black coffee and late-night television; solitude is herb tea and soft music. Solitude, quality solitude, is an assertion of self-worth, because only in the stillness can we hear the truth of our own unique voices.

If you don't annoy your big sister for no good reason from time to time, she thinks you don't love her anymore.

Any time your life is at stake and you can't find even one woman to come forward and say, 'This is a good man,' your problem isn't what kind of woman THEY are. Your problem is what kind of men YOU are.

Discomfort is always a necessary part of enlightenment.

the problem with knowing is that it takes away the possibility of pretending!

What looks like crazy on an ordinary day looks looks a lot like love if you catch it in the moonlight.

Sometimes you meet yourself on the road before you have a chance to learn the appropriate greeting. Faced with your own possibilities, the hard part is knowing a speech is not required. All you have to say is yes.

you can't know the meaning of the lesson until class is over!

You can't save a person who doesn't want to be saved. It was like Mr. Eddie always told the new gardeners: Everybody's got to kill their own snakes.

what looks like crazy on an ordinary day looks a lot like love if you catch it in the moonlight!

When you're young, there's a whole lot of stuff you say you'll never do. Once you get a little older, the list tends to get shorter.

Sometimes you have to show them what they want to see in order to get them to show you who they really are.

old habits are hard to break, but not impossible!

Defiance means you got somebody with power over you.

Both men knew the only thing more valuable than a favor well done was a secret well kept. This had the potential to be both.

...freedom can be a full-time job if you let it.

It is my belief that conscious African American students ought to be in a constant state of rage and in a constant search for ways to channel that rage into freedom struggle.

Because sometimes love just needs a witness... Somebody to testify. Sometimes love just needed somebody to step forward and say, Here I am, Spirit. Send me.

Buying flowers is not just a way to bring home beauty. It's an expression of confidence that better days are coming. It's a defiant finger in the face of those naysayers who would have you believe your fortunes will never improve.

This society gives points for pregnancy and for birthing, but after that, we isolate the mother and the baby and expect them to function the best way they can. It is very anti-family, anti-woman, anti-person!

What looks like crazy on an ordinary day, looks a lot like love when you catch it in the moonlight.

It is so important to be conscious even when it makes you realize how much negative stuff you have enjoyed all your life until you realized it was all anti you.

I need some time to myself by myself! There must be time for thought and music and peace and solitude! Also: No one can keep a creative house and work every day from nine to five. Can’t be done, folks. Ain’t no way.

When Blue sang, a lyric became a libation; a song became a sacrament.

sometimes you meet yourself on the road before you have a to learn the appropriate greeting!

I know once you repent, Jesus himself isn't big on punishment, but according to all the Old Testament stories, I ever heard, his was not above it

Liberation is a constant struggle. And this is a new year.

I just finished reading Pearl Cleage 'What looks like Crazy on an ordinary day' and Ernessa T. Carter '32 Candles'; they were both fantastic. I had almost giving up hope of finding anything I'd like to read. They contained relatable topics and wrote in vernacular that made me feel at ease with the whole process. I think I'm rediscovering my love of books from these two amazing authors.

Sometimes the contradictions in their lives are so intense they seem manufactured for teaching life lessons, but it's hard to keep up with what you're supposed to be learning in that terrible moment between defiance and despair when all your energy is going into figuring out why it took so long to name the thing that's driving you crazy. At those moments, the best I can do is keep quiet and say a little prayer, which is what I did.

Because a lie can never make you stronger, no matter how many times you tell it.

Grown people never ask you what they should do until they've already decided for themselves.

I think that a black poet can do one of two things for his people: 1. Reflect the beauty of their black life; whole, broken and mending. 2. Lead them in a righteous direction by showing them the path and what lies ahead in liberation and victory. If you call yourself a black poet and you ain’t doin’ that, you ain’t bein’ truthful and you ain’t bein’ fair and in general, you ain’t doin’ nothin’ for yr people/yr self/the struggle/the nation/the community. In short, you ain’t doin’ shit.

If you have to take a stand, home’s the best place to do it,” he said, and his voice was as soothing as the music.

You know I love Brother Buddha, but until he reincarnates as a black man in America, I think we better go with what we know.” Joyce

You can only get your heart broke so many times before you forget how to offer it up at all.

We weren’t looking for perfection. We were looking for the possibility of perfection, and that possibility is always most beautifully present in the faces of our children and then, if we are very lucky, in the faces of our grandchildren.

em,” she said softly. “That guy with the sexy voice told ’em to get ready

What looks like crazy on an ordinary day looks a lot like love if you catch it in the moonlight.

What she was saying reminded me of the scene in Gone With the Wind, where the town’s most successful madam is trying to make a contribution to the war effort, and the proper slave-owning Confederate ladies refuse it on the grounds that her money is tainted. That always cracks me up. She earns her money with sex, and they earn their money breeding people, and her money’s no good.

I felt like I almost understood. What was important and what was not. What was worth the time and effort and what was just a bunch of bullshit. And the more I looked at Eddie looking back at me, the more it was starting to make sense. Not all of it, but a little. Just a little, and at this point, that was all I needed.

We have what Martha Graham has called “blood memory” that transcends those things that can be put into words and must instead be understood in the marrow of the bones, the rhythm of the heart, the fullness of the womb. Pearl Cleage

Because Library School will take up two whole years of my life, I have decided to keep a journal of events/feelings/reactions to it as long as I can stick it out. Judging from today, that might not be too long, but I will start with a reaction to yesterday so it will not be forgotten.

saw you, Sally Hemings is the name of it. It’s in paperback for $3.25. She was Thomas Jefferson’s slave and mistress for twenty-plus years. A really good book with real

White folks don’t have to do anything to you specifically. After they do it to a couple of other people that you know about, you are so incapacitated by fear that you ain’t no use to the struggle anyhow.

Because sometimes love just needs a witness... Somebody to testify. Sometimes love just needs somebody to step forward and say, Here I am, Spirit. Send me.

Music is music, but in a revolution, land and resources are supposed to change hands.

Before reading any story purporting to be news, I ask myself one question: Is this story a personal tragedy or a community challenge?

How many terrible moments for women begin with the words “so I opened the door”?

She traveled a lot, got married a lot, divorced a lot, and always carried the scent of patchouli in the multiethnic clothing she invariably wore.

My mother always said a steady diet of scary bad news was just a right-wing plot to make people afraid to trust one another, and I used to laugh, but I think maybe she was right.

It’s like the Léon Damas story about the black man on the bus who felt bad because the only other black man on the same bus was ugly and sweaty and dirty and ill-kempt. It is hard to express it. So sad.

almost doesn’t matter what black community you go in now, the problems are exactly the same. The kids are angry. The men are shell-shocked. The women are alone and the drugs are everywhere.

Does peeing adversely affect makeup?

tremendous profits

I need the words to find the music!

You'd be amazed...at how few men have any women they can call upon to speak up for them, no matter how grave the consequences of remaining silent.

You know what’s funny about black women?” Blue asked gently. “What’s that?” “They’re the only women in the world that you have to talk into letting you protect them.” “Maybe we’ve just forgotten how.” “Exactly,” he said. “And that’s why I’m here.” “Why?” “To help you remember.” The idea of protection is so central to everything that goes on between men and women, even when we don’t admit it. Probably especially when we don’t admit it. Blue’s decision to take matters into his own hands and create a safe environment for people to live their normal, ordinary, everyday lives seemed so extraordinary in the face of the chaos we routinely accept as a community that I didn’t quite know what to say. His unequivocal acceptance of the traditional male role appealed to me on a truly visceral level, but did that mean I had to become a more traditional female to balance things out? My mind was already on overload, but I thought I understood something I hadn’t before. Something personal. “Is that why you stopped singing?” He smiled. “I didn’t stop singing. I stopped recording.” The distinction was, I’m sure, crucial to a singer the same way a writer will always separate the act of writing from the choice to publish. “Is that why you stopped recording?” “That’s part of it.” “What’s the other part?” “The other part is a conversation for another day,” he said, standing up and buttoning his coat. “I’ve taken up enough of your time.” “No problem,” I said, walking him to the door. “But what did you come over here to tell me?” “Whatever you wanted to know,” he said, turning to face me. The truth sounds funny sometimes when you just say it right out. “I see.” “So how’d I do?” I opened the door and looked right into his eyes. “So far, so good.

Discomfort is always a necessary part of the process of enlightenment.

Because what looks like crazy on an ordinary day can look like love howling if you see it in the moonlight".

Bad judgement and carelessness are not punishable by rape.

The problem I’ve had all my dating life is that the guys who drive me crazy sexually never seem to care much about being a part of the righteous forward motion of all peoples of the world toward peace and freedom. This is part of my parents’ revolutionary curse. I have to consider politics even in the midst of passion.

Well, I’m working on a project now with some women who are working as strippers.” I liked the way she said that: “women who are working as strippers.” Not “strippers.” She made stripping what they did for a living, not who they were.

What good is trying to reform if you have to spend the rest of your life paying for the stupid things you did when you still got high and didn’t give a damn?

JULY 22, 1971 This morning on Hunter Street, I passed a black woman at the bus stop. She was simply dressed in a green-and-white checked shirtwaist dress. It was a little too big and little bit too long, but not really sloppy. It had a little fabric-covered belt to match, too. But on top of her head was a huge, platinum blond wig. It was curled and flipped and teased and in general fixed to look as hideous as possible. It wasn’t even pulled down very far. It was just sitting there like it was a bird who had decided to light there and visit with her for a while. She had a very serious expression and she was looking down the street intently for the bus. The wig was looking, too, but I don’t think it was looking for the bus. It looked like it had had a hard night and would welcome an Alka Seltzer.

Oppression is built on a series of assumptions, and if they begin to crumble, the system is in grave danger. The assumptions have got to be just as strong with the oppressed as with the oppression mongers. The oppressed must feel inferior and then he will act inferior.