I can only describe it as: the whole experience was imprinted on my body. And when I started to write it, it just came from such a very, In The Body of the Worldvery physical... it just came from my body. I don't know how to explain it better than that. I guess my head was transmitting it. It was a very, very physical experience writing this book.

An activist is someone who cannot help but fight for something. That person is not usually motivated by a need for power or money or fame, but in fact is driven slightly mad by some injustice, some cruelty, some unfairness, so much so that he or she is compelled by some internal moral engine to act to make it better.

Political change and academic change and intellectual change are obviously crucial, but they don't necessarily change society. They can change a particular class and give everybody in that class great arguments, but that doesn't necessarily translate into the body of the culture.

I'm a nomad. I have a place in New York in the Flatiron District, and I have a place in Paris in Ile Saint-Louis, and I spend a lot of time in Congo.

I think we have to get bolder. Why after Fukushima didn't we all go out and shut down all the nuclear power plants and stay there until it happened?

I think when people begin to tell their stories, everything changes, because not only are you legitimized in the telling of your story and are you found, literally, like you matter, you exist in the telling of your story, but when you hear your story be told, you suddenly exist in community and with others.

I finally know the difference between pleasing and loving, obeying and respecting. It has taken me so many years to be okay with being different, and with being this alive, this intense.