It takes courage to lead a life. Any life.

The bruise on the heart which at first feels incredibly tender to the slightest touch eventually turns all the shades of the rainbow and stops aching. We forget about it. We even forget we have hearts until the next time. And then we wonder how we ever could have forgotten. We think this one is better, because, in fact, we cannot fully remember the time before.

Before things are written down they don't exist in quite the same way. The act of fixing them in words gives them a kind of currency that can be traded.

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.

certain very old people reach an age where every funeral becomes some sort of insane confirmation of strength, rather than of vulnerability, as it is when we are in our thirties or forties and our friends die.

Harriet van Horne He makes love to me expertly, mechanically, coldly... He's pressing all my buttons, as if I were a pocket calculator.

If sex and creativity are often seen by dictators as subversive activities, it's because they lead to the knowledge that you own your own body (and with it your own voice), and that's the most revolutionary insight of all.