Walt Lee

“Self-esteem is your capacity to recognize your worth and value, despite your human flaws and weaknesses. Your value as a person isn't earned; it isn't conditional; it can't be added to or subtracted from. Your essential worth is neither greater nor lesser than that of any other human being. It can't be. Self-esteem is about being, not doing. You have worth simply because you're alive.”
― Terrence Real, The New Rules of Marriage: What You Need to Know to Make Love Work

“When someone said to me, ‘How do you feel?’ or ‘What do you think?’ or asked another direct question, I would recite a poem, and somewhere in that poem would be the feeling, the vital piece of information. It might be a line. It might be an image. The poem was my response.”
― Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

“I fix myself, even when it causes great pain to do so, because I know that I cannot fix the way the world sees me.”
― Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick: And Other Essays

“However, experience has taught us that action in the now is also necessary, always. Our children cannot dream unless they live, they cannot live unless they are nourished, and who else will feed them the real food without which their dreams will be no different from ours? 'If you want us to change the world someday, we at least have to live long enough to grow up!' shouts the child.”
― Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches