We Gypsies know that where Jews are killed, Gypsies are always murthered too. And then a lot of other people, usually.

Every writer hopes his or her book will be its own thing.

I wasn't brought up to be dazzled by money or fame.

My guess is that he remembers some of me, some of us together, and the rest rolled off him like topsoil in a flash flood.

In the end, I always act from the heart, even if I also value reason and tradition. I wish I could explain why, but I don't know.

Never before had I known the sudden quiver of understanding that travels from word to brain to heart, the way a new language can move, coil, swim into life under the eyes, the almost savage leap of comprehension, the instantaneous, joyful release of meaning, the way the words shed their printed bodies in a flash of heat and light.

It's a shame for women's history to be all about men--first boys, then other boys, then men men men. It reminds me of the way our school history textbooks were all about wars and elections, one war after another, with the dull periods of peace skimmed over whenever they occurred. (Our teachers deplored this and added extra units about social history and protest movements, but that was still the message of the books.)