What I would say to young women is: Pay attention to the real. Pay attention to what you're really thirsting for. What do you really want? And I think that's much harder to decipher in a culture that has no interest in it. What interests me is, are we going to wake in time? Are human beings going to wake up to ourselves, to the incredible poverty that's on this planet, to what we're doing to the earth, to what we're doing to women, to what we're doing to boys? That's what's important.

What happened with cancer was that I just became a body. There was nothing else but body for a month. I was chemo'd and operated on and cut and poked. At first it was really horrifying and scary, and then it was just,Wow. You're in your body. This is body!

Today the United States has the highest prison population in the world, over 2.1 million people. ... We lock people up at a rate that is seven to ten times that of any other democracy.

People need to dance. I'd say dance at least twice a day. That's how to get your energy up and how you keep you revolutionary spirit going. It's Emma Goldman who said, "Any revolution where I can't dance is not my revolution." I think that's the revolution we want.

I think that's part of the whole denial and suicidal mechanism [ of the human's race] right "Oh my God, the house is on fire." You sleep through the smoke.

I think what all of us have in common is that we've been taught and trained and programmed to focus on fixing and mutilating ourselves. That's a core reason why women do not have power in the world.

Dancing insists we take up space, and though it has no set direction, we go there together. Dance is dangerous, joyous, sexual, holy, disruptive, and contagious and it breaks the rules. It can happen anywhere, at anytime, with anyone and everyone, and it's free. Dance joins us and pushes us to go further and that is why it's at the center of ONE BILLION RISING.