I want to read so I can read the Koran read the signs in the street know the number of the bus I'm supposed to take when I one day leave this house.

I got to a nine-hour surgery, I lost lots of body parts and rearranged, I got really months of infection that I lost 30 pounds. But the idea of pumping poison into my bloodstream just - I couldn't, I couldn't.

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'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.

What I have found is that even when you try to transform existing structures they are so powerful they often overwhelm, seduce, and control you.

But my body was telling its story. I have read a lot of stuff about cancer. I needed this book. I wish I'd had this book when I had cancer. I wanted someone to be talking to me about "fart floors." I wanted somebody telling me what it was like to have a colostomy bag. I felt so alone. And if you're a person who's been traumatized by past abuse, it's so potentially re-traumatizing. You slip right into "oh my god, this is the only person this has happened to before" mentality: "I'm especially bad and I have especially bad cancer..."

It seems to me that we spend an inordinate amount of time and attention on fixing ourselves when we could really be directing that out to serving others.