The loudest sound on earth, she thought, is a man with nothing to do.

Downstream is always someone else's up.

Independence is a complex word in a foreign tongue. To resist occupation, whether you're a nation or merely a woman, you must understand the language of your enemy. Conquest and liberation and democrac and divorce are words that mean squat, basically, when you have hungry children and clothes to get out on the line and it looks like rain.

there are people who read my work and accuse me of being political! As far as I'm concerned that's like accusing a dog of having a bark!

A mother's body remembers her babies-the folds of soft flesh, the softly furred scalp against her nose. Each child has it's own entreaties to body and soul.

All of the promises of politicians, generals, madmen, and crusaders that war can create peace have yet to be borne out.

Every life is different because you passed this way and touched history... Listen being dead is not worse than being alive. It is different though. You could say the view is larger.