I think I would have died if there hadn't been the women's movement.

The only magic we have is what we make in ourselves, the muscles we build up on the inside, the sense of belief we create from nothing.

my life has been saved over and over again by picking up a book in which someone captured the whole experience of being despised and not dying.

Don't go taking that gospel stuff seriously. It's nice to clean you out now and then, but it ain't for real. It's like bad whiskey. Run through you fast and leave you with pain.

Mama learned to laugh with them, before they could laugh at her, and to do it so well no one could be sure what she really thought or felt.

That was what gospel was meant to do - make you hate and love yourself at the same time, make you ashamed and glorified.

I think I would have died if there hadn't been the women's movement. It gave me a vision that I could do something different, and it gave me an understanding that I wasn't a monster, or sport, or a betrayer of my family.