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.

This artistic uprising we had the other night in Washington Square park: there was poetry, there was dance, there was song, there was spoken word; and people left feeling so inspired and so energised. We have to get ourselves out of this syndrome of trauma and being re-traumatised. Art releases this energy. It exposes us to wonder again, and magic again, and ambiguity - all the things we need to really keep going and fighting and resisting in these times.

Denial is really death. People think that when you're connected with other people it's more painful. The opposite is true. When you're connected to the river you have despair, but you also have joy, and there's a flow in the river.

I literally would go to see Tina Turner any opportunity I had because being in the presence of Tina Turner was like being in the presence of transformative energy, and feminist transformative energy. I remember thinking to myself, whatever this is, it's revolution. Whatever this is, it's change embodied in a woman.

If you are divided from your body, then you are divided from the body of the world.

To love women, to love our vaginas, to know them and touch them and be familiar with who we are and what we need. To satisfy ourselves, to teach our lovers to satisfy us, to be present in our vaginas, to speak of them out loud, to speak of their hunger and pain and loneliness and humor, to make them visible so they cannot be ravaged in the dark without great consequence, so that our center, our point, our motor, our dream, is no longer detached, mutilated, numb, broken, invisible, or ashamed.

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.