Living simply makes loving simple': bell hooks' quotes on love, relationships and feminism - USA TODAY
Beloved author, professor and feminist bell hooks, known for titles like "Ain't I a Woman" and "All About Love," died Wednesday at 69, her family confirmed to USA TODAY.
Born Gloria Jean Watkins in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, she penned her literary works under the pseudonym bell hooks, a tribute to her great-grandmother that she chose to write using lowercase letters to focus attention on her words rather than herself.
bell hooks wrote over 30 books, leaving a legacy of powerful words on pain, love, equality and much more. Her quotes filled social media in the hours following the announcement of her death.
Here are some of her most profound sentences, per Goodreads.
bell hooks on love and relationships
"Love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust."
― "Communion: The Female Search for Love"
"Living simply makes loving simple."
"To love well is the task in all meaningful relationships, not just romantic bonds."
― "All About Love: New Visions"
"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."
bell hooks death: Feminist author and poet bell hooks, known for 'Aint I A Woman' and 'All About Love', dies at 69
bell hooks on feminism and equality
"No black woman writer in this culture can write 'too much.' Indeed, no woman writer can write 'too much' … No woman has ever written enough."
― "Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work"
"If any female feels she need anything beyond herself to legitimate and validate her existence, she is already giving away her power to be self-defining, her agency."
― "Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics"
"I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else's whim or to someone else's ignorance."
"As all advocates of feminist politics know most people do not understand sexism or if they do they think it is not a problem. Masses of people think that feminism is always and only about women seeking to be equal to men. And a huge majority of these folks think feminism is anti-male. Their misunderstanding of feminist politics reflects the reality that most folks learn about feminism from patriarchal mass media."
"Being oppressed means the absence of choices."
"The process begins with the individual woman's acceptance that American women, without exception, are socialized to be racist, classist and sexist, in varying degrees, and that labeling ourselves feminists does not change the fact that we must consciously work to rid ourselves of the legacy of negative socialization."
― "Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism"
More quotes: DMX's most iconic lyrics and quotes about hip-hop, family, addiction and faith
bell hooks on pain and suffering
"Contrary to what we may have been taught to think, unnecessary and unchosen suffering wounds us but need not scar us for life. It does mark us. What we allow the mark of our suffering to become is in our own hands."
― "All About Love: New Visions"
"The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control."
― "All About Love: New Visions"
bell hooks on self-acceptance
"One of the best guides to how to be self-loving is to give ourselves the love we are often dreaming about receiving from others. There was a time when I felt lousy about my over-forty body, saw myself as too fat, too this, or too that. Yet I fantasized about finding a lover who would give me the gift of being loved as I am. It is silly, isn't it, that I would dream of someone else offering to me the acceptance and affirmation I was withholding from myself. This was a moment when the maxim 'You can never love anybody if you are unable to love yourself' made clear sense. And I add, 'Do not expect to receive the love from someone else you do not give yourself.' "
― "All About Love: New Visions"
"I want there to be a place in the world where people can engage in one another's differences in a way that is redemptive, full of hope and possibility. Not this 'In order to love you, I must make you something else.' That's what domination is all about, that in order to be close to you, I must possess you, remake and recast you."
― "Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies"
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