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Bell Hooks Quotes about Writing

All Bell Hooks Quotes Abuse Acceptance Anarchy Art Awareness Belief Challenges Childhood Children Choices Commitment Community Compassion Country Criticism Culture Desire Diversity Effort Fate Feelings Feminism Focus Gender Giving Growth Heart Home Hurt Identity Imagination Integrity Justice Language Life Lifetime Loss Love Lying Oppression Pain Passion Patriarchy Prejudice Privacy Racism Rage Reading Reality Romantic Love School Self Esteem Self Love Sexism Shame Silence Sleep Soul Stress Struggle Students Suffering Teaching Understanding Vision War Writing quotes

The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is-it’s to imagine what is possible.

The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is-it’s to imagine what is possible.

Art, Writing, Imagine

bell hooks (2012). “Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations”, p.281, Routledge

Writing is my passion. It is a way to experience the ecstatic. The root understanding of the word ecstasy—“to stand outside”—comes to me in those moments when I am immersed so deeply in the act of thinking and writing that everything else, even flesh, falls away.

Fall, Passion, Writing

bell hooks (2013). “remembered rapture: the writer at work”, p.35, Macmillan

I write these words to bear witness to the primacy of resistance struggle in any situation of domination (even within family life); to the strength and power that emerges from sustained resistance and the profound conviction that these forces can be healing, can protect us from dehumanization and despair.

Struggle, Writing, Healing

bell hooks (2014). “Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black”, p.20, Routledge

Writing and performing should deepen the meaning of words, should illuminate, transfix and transform.

Writing, Should, Performing

bell hooks (2013). “remembered rapture: the writer at work”, p.36, Macmillan

Any woman who wishes to be an intellectual, to write non-fiction, to deal with theory, faces a lot of discrimination coming her way and perhaps even self-doubt because there aren't that many who've gone before you. And I think that the most powerful tool we can have is to be clear about our intent. To know what it is we want to do rather than going into institutions thinking that the institution is going to frame for us.

Powerful, Writing, Thinking

Interview with Pierce Freelon, blackademics.org. October, 2006.

If we are ever to construct a feminist movement that is not based on the premise that men and women are always at war with one another, then we must be willing to acknowledge the appropriateness of complex critical responses to writing by men even if it is sexist. Clearly women can learn from writers whose work is sexist, even be inspired by it, because sexism may be simply one dimension of that work. Concurrently fiercely critiquing the sexism does not mean that one does not value the work.

War, Writing, Mean

bell hooks (2014). “Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics”, p.87, Routledge

I began writing a book on love because I felt that the United States is moving away from love.

Moving On, Book, Writing

"Building a Community of Love: bell hooks and Thich Nhat Hanh". www.lionsroar.com. March 24, 2017.

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.

Women, Writing, Black

I mostly want to remind her of the recipes of healing, and give her my own made-on-the spot remedy for the easing of her pain. I tell her, “Get a pen. Stop crying so you can write this down and start working on it tonight.” My remedy is long. But the last item on the list says: “When you wake up and find yourself living someplace where there is nobody you love and trust, no community, it is time to leave town – to pack up and go (you can even go tonight). And where you need to go is any place where there are arms that can hold you, that will not let you go.

Pain, Writing, Healing

I grew up in the midst of poverty but every black kid that I knew could read and write. We have to talk about the fact that we cannot educate for critical consciousness if we have a group of people who cannot access Fanon, Cabral, or Audre Lorde because they can’t read or write. How did Malcolm X radicalize his consciousness? He did it through books. If you deprive working-class and poor black people of access to reading and writing, you are making them that much farther removed from being a class that can engage in revolutionary resistance.

Book, Reading, Writing

When I write provocative social and cultural criticism that causes readers to stretch their minds, to think beyond set paradigms, I think of that work as love in action. While it may challenge, disturb and at times even frighten or enrage readers, love is always the place where I begin and end.

Writing, Love Is, Thinking

"Building a Community of Love: bell hooks and Thich Nhat Hanh". www.lionsroar.com. March 24, 2017.

Some people act as though art that is for a mass audience is not good art, and I think this has been a very negative thing. I know that I have wanted very much to write books that are accessible to the widest audience possible.

Art, Book, Writing

Part of why I have started writing about love is feeling that our culture is forgetting what Martin Luther King taught. We name more and more streets and schools after him but that's almost irrelevant, because what is to be remembered is that strength to love.

Kings, Writing, School

"Building a Community of Love". Interview with Thich Nhat Hanh, plumvillage.org. January 1, 2000.

Writing and the hope of writing pulls me back from the edges of despair. I believe insanity and despair are at times one and the same.

Believe, Writing, Insanity

bell hooks (2013). “remembered rapture: the writer at work”, p.8, Macmillan

One difference with the political writings, whether about feminism or class, is that the intent is to change how people think of a certain political reality; whereas with cultural criticism, the goal is to illuminate something that is already there.

Writing, Thinking, Reality

"How Do You Practice Intersectionalism? An Interview with bell hooks". Interview with Randy Lowens, nefac.net. March 15, 2012.

I do get a little pissed at people who write me and want me to do things, and spell my name wrong.

Writing, Names, People

Source: nefac.net

A distinction must be made between that writing which enables us to hold on to life even as we are clinging to old hurts and wounds and that writing which offers to us a space where we are able to confront reality in such a way that we live more fully. Such writing is not an anchor that we mistakenly cling to so as not to drown. It is writing that truly rescues, that enables us to reach the shore, to recover.

Hurt, Writing, Reality

bell hooks (2013). “remembered rapture: the writer at work”, p.11, Henry Holt and Company

My focus has always been on the work - that work being critical thinking and writing. I am always doing that. That's where I am, wherever I am. Critical thinking and writing as my heartbeat.

Writing, Thinking, Focus

"The BK Nation INTERVIEW with bell hooks". Interview with Kevin Powell, bknation.org. February 28, 2014.

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