Perhaps growing up meant we put our knives away and feigned ignorance of the damage.

You see mother, you had no life of your own. They have no idea. One has only a life of one's own.

From my earliest memory, times of crisis seemed to end up with women in the kitchen preparing food for men.

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.

Every betrayal contains a perfect moment, a coin stamped heads or tails with salvation on the other side.

What I want is so simple I almost can't say it: elementary kindness.

Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet. They are what we call civilization.