My mother listened to all the news from the camp during the strike. She said little, especially when my father or the men who worked for him were about I remember her instinctive and unhesitating sympathy for the miners.

Now, being a girl, I was ashamed of my body and my lack of strength. So I tried to be a man. I shot, rode, jumped, and took part in all the fights of the boys.

For the first week of the Sian events I was a first aid worker in the streets of Sian.

Everybody calls everybody a spy, secretly, in Russia, and everybody is under surveillance. You never feel safe.

I have always detested the belief that sex is the chief bond between man and woman. Friendship is far more human.

Yet it is awful to love a person who is a torture to you. And a fascinating person who loves you and won't hear of anything but your loving him and living right by his side through all eternity!

And the woman who could win the respect of man was often the woman who could knock him down with her bare fists and sit on him until he yelled for help.