If you want to challenge the system, don't go to bed with it.

I am a work in progress Dressed in the fabric of a world unfolding Offering me intricate patterns of questions Rhythms that never come clean And strengths that you still haven't seen

...words are some of the most powerful and important things I know....Language is the tool of love and the weapon of hatred. It's the bright red warning flag of danger--and the stone foundation of diplomacy and peace.

Criticism is hard for me but people find hard to believe because they think I'm very tough, very strident, that I tell everybody where to get off, and how. But I've actually got a really thin skin. I don't know. It's quite pathetic. So, yeah, it's hard for me to take criticism. But I also kind of have this sense of humor on overdrive, so I don't take any of it seriously. So that sort of saves me, the fact that I think it's just all kind of funny.

So many of us, myself included, need to keep our sense of personal outrage in check. Each human beings position on the planet is one of intense humility.

At night when you're asleep, self-hatred's going to creep in. And you can blame it on the devil, the one who's bed you sleep in.

My mother was a feminist, and she gave me some tools of self-possession and self-empowerment, but now that I have lived here for forty-three years, it's, like, whoa, there is just so much more to do, other than become myself. I'm still talking about it. I still drop the P-word, "patriarchy," on unsuspecting people in everyday conversations.