We need to imagine a world in which every woman is the presiding genius of her own body. In such a world women will truly create new life, bringing forth not only children if and as we choose but the visions, and the thinking, necessary to sustain, console and alter human existence-a new relationship to the universe. Sexuality, politics, intelligence, power, motherhood, work, community, intimacy will develop new meanings; thinking itself will be transformed. This is where we have to begin.

When one woman tells her truth, it makes a space for other women to tell their truths.

One of the great functions of art is to help us imagine what it is like to be not ourselves, what it is like to be someone or something else, what it is like to live in another skin, what it is like to live in another body, and in that sense to surpass ourselves, to go out beyond ourselves.

Strangers are an endangered species.

I don’t think we can separate art from overall human dignity and hope.

The words are purposes./The words are maps./I came to see the damage that was done/and the treasures that prevail.

... passion for survival is the great theme of women's poetry.