The passage is through, not over, not by, not around but through.

The political writer, then, is the ultimate optimist, believing people are capable of change and using words as one way to try and penetrate the privatism of our lives.

Sometimes a breakdown can be the beginning of a kind of breakthrough, a way of living in advance through a trauma that prepares you for a future of radical transformation.

Smell remembers and tells the future. ... Smell is home or loneliness. Confidence or betrayal. Smell remembers.

Our strategy is how we cope--how we measure and weigh what is to be said and when, what is to be done and how, and to whom and towhom and to whom, daily deciding/risking who it is we can call an ally, call a friend (whatever that person's skin, sex or sexuality). We are women without a line. We are women who contradict each other.

To assess the damage is a dangerous act.

But it is not really difference the oppressor fears so much as similarity.