fiction is the great lie that tells the truth

He never said "Don't tell your mama." He never had to say it. I did not know how to tell anyone what I felt, what scared me and shamed me... (109)

I need you to do more than survive. As writers, as revolutionaries, tell the truth, your truth in your own way.

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

I was born trash in a land where the people all believe themselves natural aristocrats.

I have wanted everything as a writer and a woman, but most of all a world changed utterly by my revelations.

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.