(CNN) As a beautiful writer once said, and it seems all the more worth repeating now: "I'm a firm believer that language and how we use language determines how we act, and how we act then determines our lives and other people's lives."

In the midst of a wrenching week, when there has been so much to mourn, we also feel the loss of the poet, novelist, and pioneering voice who wrote those words about the power of language. Ntozake Shange died Saturday in Maryland at the age of 70, according to the Star Tribune. News of her death was also provided by her family on Twitter

Shange presented her groundbreaking choreopoem, "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf," in 1975; it became an off-Broadway play in 1976 and Tyler Perry wrote, produced and directed a film adaptation in 2010. Shange coined "choreopoem" to describe her work in "For Colored Girls," a dramatic expression blending poetry, dance, music and song.

Perhaps her most famous lines were these:

i found god in myself