Compose with utter freedom and edit with utter discipline.

It's easier to write about pain than about joy. Joy is wordless.

But if the gods do not exist at all - then we are lost,' I said. On the contrary - we are found!' said Aesop. But when we are afraid, who can we turn to, if not the gods?' Ourselves. We turn to ourselves anyway. We only pretend there are gods and that they care about us. It is a comforting falsehood.

The best slave does not need to be beaten. She beats herself.

I understand that unless you have a government of laws, rather than a government of people, you cannot protect dissent. And I understand, as a woman who probably would have been burned in the marketplace for witchcraft only about 200 years ago, that I need the First Amendment more than anybody does. And that even if I am repelled by child pornography or Bob Guccione's productions, that I have to protect those things, because essentially it's in my self-interest to do so.

Writing about sex turns out to be just writing about life.

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