Looking at traditional marriages, it seems the surest way for a woman to be alone is to get married.

As an activist, you do find yourself directed more toward public action. But I've always tried to use stories from my own life in my writing for instance. It has always been clear to me that the stories of each other's lives are our best textbooks. Every social justice movement that I know of has come out of people sitting in small groups, telling their life stories, and discovering that other people have shared similar experiences. So, if we've shared many experiences, then it probably has something to do with power or politics, and if we unify and act together, then we can make a change.

Liberation does not come from outside.

The idea that women don't smell fine on our own is a problem.

We do what we see and what we're told. If we haven't been raised in a family or in a community where women are treated as full human beings and men don't have to be superior anymore, we continue to think that it's not only natural but inevitable.

I feel this is very much our spiritual and political duty to be part of every peace table, it has often been the case that citizenry -- women and men -- can make progress when it is not possible for the officials to be able to meet at that moment in time.

Violence against women is clearly not solved, not at all solved, and the reasons for it, which are controlling women's bodies in order to control reproduction, are definitely not solved.