We learn best to listen to our own voices if we are listening at the same time to other women-whose stories, for all our differences, turn out, if we listen well, to be our stories also.

Of course it can be said of jails, too, that they try - by punishing the troublesome - to deter others. No doubt, in certain instances this deterrence actually works. But generally speaking it fails conspicuously.

The longer we listen to one another - with real attention - the more commonality we will find in all our lives. That is, if we are careful to exchange with one another life stories and not simply opinions.

Let me be really here, here in this place and this time where I am.

The injunction that we should love our neighbors as ourselves means to us equally that we should love ourselves as we love our neighbors.

This is the heart of my argument: We can put more pressure on the antagonist for whom we show human concern.

We cannot live without our lives