I used to tell women graduate students, half-seriously, that the role of slightly rebellious daughter was one of the better roles for women living in patriarchy.

The hardest times for me were not when people challenged what I said, but when I felt my voice was not heard.

Trust grows when babies and mothers establish that they can find each other again after the inevitable moments of losing touch. It is not the goodness of the mother or the relationship per se that is the basis for trust; it is the ability of mother and baby together to repair the breaks in their relationship that builds a safe house for love.

While an ethic of justice proceeds from the premise of equality—that everyone should be treated the same—an ethic of care rests on the premise of nonviolence—that no one should be hurt.

Pleasure is a sensation. It is written into our bodies; it is our experience of delight, of joy. ... Pleasure will become a marker, a compass pointing to emotional true north.

Maybe love is like rain. Sometimes gentle, sometimes torrential, flooding, eroding, joyful, steady, filling the earth, collecting in underground springs. When it rains, when we love, life grows.

It all goes back, of course, to Adam and Eve - a story which shows among other things, that if you make a woman out of a man, you are bound to get into trouble.