People who attack others need rationalizations for doing so. We undermine those rationalizations. Barbara Deming
We believe, in fact, that the one act of respect has little force unless matched by the other - in balance with it... The acting out of that dual respect I would name as precisely the source of our power. Barbara Deming
The free man must be born before freedom can be won, and the brotherly man must be born before full brotherhood can be won. It will come into being only if we build it out of our very muscle and bone - by trying to act it out. Barbara Deming
After the revolution, let us hope, prisons simply would not exist - if by prisons we mean places that could be experienced by the men and women in them at all as every place that goes by that name now is bound to be experienced. Barbara Deming
This is the heart of my argument: We can put more pressure on the antagonist for whom we show human concern. Barbara Deming
Nonviolent tactics can move into action on our behalf men not naturally inclined to act for us. Barbara Deming
All prisons that have existed in our society to date put people away as no human being should ever be put away. Barbara Deming
The longer we listen to one another - with real attention - the more commonality we will find in all our lives. That is, if we are careful to exchange with one another life stories and not simply opinions. Barbara Deming
The point is to change one's life. The point is not to give some vent to the emotions that have been destroying one; the point is so to act that one can master them now. Barbara Deming
I think the only choice that will enable us to hold to our vision... is one that abandons the concept of naming enemies and adopts a concept familiar to the nonviolent tradition: naming behavior that is oppressive. Barbara Deming
Our task, of course, is to transmute the anger that is affliction into the anger that is determination to bring about change. I think, in fact, that one could give that as a definition of revolution. Barbara Deming
The injunction that we should love our neighbors as ourselves means to us equally that we should love ourselves as we love our neighbors. Barbara Deming
We learn best to listen to our own voices if we are listening at the same time to other women - whose stories, for all our differences, turn out, if we listen well, to be our stories also. Barbara Deming
Vengeance is not the point; change is. But the trouble is that in most people's minds the thought of victory and the thought of punishing the enemy coincide. Barbara Deming
I think a 23-page ordinary comic is an investment for the artist, but if you're doing something 60 to 104 pages, that's a really big investment for an artist. So unless you've got someone who wants to pay you while you're doing it or up front, it's kind hard to get someone to do that with you, unless you're the artist yourself. Samuel R.Delany
A number of things in 'Dhalgren' are just meant to function as mysteries. They're mysteries when the book begins, and they're mysteries when the book ends. Samuel R.Delany
I want to read about a character doing something fairly quiet where I can picture who the character is, and what their attitude towards the world is - which I'm a lot more interested in than what they do under the pressure of a gunfight. Samuel R.Delany
The idea that certain things in life - and in the universe - don't yield up their secrets is something that requires a slightly more mature reader to accept. Samuel R.Delany
All too often, when creative people pick out someone else's creative work as an inspiration, what they end up with is very, very far from the original. Samuel R.Delany