Individuals who want to believe that there is no fulfillment in love, that true love does not exist, cling to these assumptions because this despair is actually easier to face than the reality that love is a real fact of life but is absent from their lives. ― bell hooks

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All too often women believe it is a sign of commitment, an expression of love, to endure unkindness or cruelty, to forgive and forget. In actuality, when we love rightly we know that the healthy, loving response to cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of harm's way. ― Bell Hooks

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When we truly embrace acceptance, that's when our body exhales and can begin healing.

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I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else's whim or to someone else's ignorance. ― bell hooks

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To return to love, to get the love we always wanted but never had, to have the love we want but are not prepared to give, we seek romantic relationships. We believe these relationships, more than any other, will rescue and redeem us. True love does have the power to redeem but only if we are ready for redemption. Love saves us only if we want to be saved. ― bell hooks

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The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control. ― Bell Hooks

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I am passionate about everything in my life--first and foremost, passionate about ideas. And that's a dangerous person to be in this society, not just because I'm a woman, but because it's such a fundamentally anti-intellectual, anti-critical thinking society. --bell hooks ― bh

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Living simply makes loving simple. ― bell hooks

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If you don't accept yourself, you won't live fully, and if you don't live fully you'll need to get full some other way.

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Relationships are based on four principles: respect, understanding, acceptance and appreciation.

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