For a mother the project of raising a boy is the most fulfilling project she can hope for.

We think that we live in a heterosexual society because most men are fixated on women as sexual objects; but, in fact, we live ina homosexual society because all credible transactions of power, authority, and authenticity take place among men; all transactions based on equity and individuality take place among men. Men are real; therefore, all real relationship is between men; all real communication is between men; all real reciprocity is between men; all real mutuality is between men.

Writing is alchemy. Dross becomes gold. Experience is transformed. Pain is changed. Suffering may become song. The ordinary or horrible is pushed by the will of the writer into grace or redemption, a prophetic wail, a screed for justice, an elegy of sadness or sorrow. ... There is always a tension between experience and the thing that finally carries it forward, bears its weight, holds it in. Without that tension, one might as well write a shopping list.

If you want a definition of what a coward is, it’s needing to push a whole class of people down so that you can walk on top of them.

Under patriarchy, every woman's son is her potential betrayer and also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman.

Men know everything - all of them - all the time - no matter how stupid or inexperienced or arrogant or ignorant they are.

I have to ask you to resist, not to comply, to destroy the power men have over women, to refuse to accept it, to abhor it and to do whatever is necessary despite its cost to you to change it.