If I'm killed - if I'm removed - there is nowhere else for me to go but to my ancestors.

Creation is a sustained period of bliss.

Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book, If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.

I know from having had a child, and from having been a child myself, that children will copy you. So, the best way to get them to read, is to read. The best way to get them to do anything is to do it yourself, and they will absolutely copy you. That way, you don't have to worry about what's supposedly age appropriate, a child will pick something up when the child is ready.

But if by some miracle and all our struggle, the earth is spared, only justice to every living being will save humankind.

People will say to you, "Oh, you are fearless." That is so not true. We should stop saying that about people. It's a slander, really.

In the far upper corner of my altar is a photo of Joan Crawford in her most fierce Mommy Dearest mode, just to remind me of some of the cost of everyone's hard-earned sweetness and light.