We have to recognize that it is a very, very painful thing for people to be exposed to their social community, to be exposed in the world, as not what they would have wanted to be seen as. This is very painful and difficult for people.

Reader, you forget that economics precedes religion; worship grew out of eating, not the other way around.

I've told the same story twelve different ways, but I think that's just part of what writers do. Once may not be enough.

When I grew up, you needed to have straight hair. It's symbolic of needing to be like everyone else, needing to look like everyone else. And what that meant was looking like the dominant ruling class in America.

I feel that the world needs writers. We need to know what's really going on.

You need your freedom. You need to be able to do what you want to do as a journalist, as a person who's speaking for other women as you speak for yourself, and you make a choice. You have to be tough enough to take the consequences of that choice.

Friendship needs both confidences and confidence in the other's outstretched hand.