Helped are those who are content to be themselves; they will never lack mystery in their lives and the joys of self-discovery will be constant.

My mother had handed down respect for the possibilities...and the will to grasp them.

How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers names.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence - as it saves most writers who live in 'interesting' oppressive times and are not afflicted by personal immunity.

What a burden to think one is conceived in sin rather than in pleasure; that one is born into evil rather than into joy.

Activism is the rent I pay for living on this planet.

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.