The cancer in me became an awareness of the cancer that is everywhere. The cancer of cruelty, the cancer of carelessness, the cancer of greed.

My commitment originated in my own story and my own relationship to violence.

...to speak of them out loud, to speak of their hunger and pain and loneliness and humour, to make them visible so that can not be ravaged in the dark without great consequence.

For me, so much of my life has been this attempt to find my way back into my body. I tried various forms, from promiscuity, to eating disorders, to performance art. And I think it wasn't until I got cancer, where I was suddenly being pricked and ported and chemoed and operated on, that I suddenly just became body. I was just a body. And it was in that, in that finally landing in myself that I really discovered the world in my body.

Why don't we bring everyone up to be caring and compassionate, to believe that we are connected with everyone and everything around us?

Three of the ten principles governing the City of Joy are (a) tell the truth, (b) stop waiting to be rescued, and (c) give away what you want the most.

There's an underlying puritanicalness in America that is not that different to the prudishness of Britain - it just manifests itself in different ways.