It is true for me, as for so many countless others, that librarians saved my life, my internal life.

Language can't solve everything, of course, but it does carry our dreams and our ideas.

Whatever each individual woman is facing; only she knows her biggest challenge. However, if we add up the problems that affect the biggest numbers of women, then issues having to do with physical safety and reproduction are still the biggest. Female bodies are still the battleground, whether that means restricting freedom, birth control and safe abortion in order to turn them into factories, or abandoning female infants because females are less valuable for everything other than reproduction.

There's a big gap between public opinion polls and the vote in Washington, in Congress. The majority consciousness has changed, and often that has made very clear, practical changes in our daily lives, but the centers of power are still not occupied, for the most part, by this new consciousness.

No one can give us power. If we aren’t part of the process of taking it, we won’t be strong enough to use it.

Most books are bought by women.

Women are never again going to be mindless coffee-makers or mindless policy-makers in politics.