it is not unusual to hate great writers before we learn to love them. Because they have created something that did not yet exist, they must also create their audience. Sometimes the audience is not yet ready. Sometimes it has yet to be born.

Every time women make tremendous strides, the right wing gets terrified and creates laws making it hard to get an abortion or birth control.

Hate generalizes; love is particular.

Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness.

We've shown again and again, in every UN report on the status of women, that wherever women control their own bodies and have access to education, societies prosper. Men's fortunes go up, children's fortunes go up. This is not news - it's been proven repeatedly. Anywhere those things are threatened, we have to defend them.

I never became a writer for the money. I am a poet first. Even getting published is a miracle for poets.

I have accepted fear as a part of life - specifically the fear of change... I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back.