We can never go back. I know that now. We can go forward. We can find the love our hearts long for, but not until we let go grief about the love we lost long ago, when we were little and had no voice to speak the heart’s longing.
-- bell hooks (Preface)

Importance: This quote is about how hooks has thought about and dealt with the lack of love in her childhood. She has learned not to dwell on the wounds of the past, but to work through them in order to experience love in the present and future. Working through those past wounds is essential in making it possible for an individual to give and receive the kind of love that they were denied in childhood. In her discussion of this healing, hooks emphasizes the importance of letting go, suggesting that it is only when the mourning of the past is complete...