We know from many forms of suffering that what is important first is a witness - people want to know that someone else knows what's happening, that they're not alone - and someone who listens to what is needed and tries to help.

When you attempt something new, there's always fear. A couple of helpful slogans to me are "follow the fear" or "fear is a sign of growth."

If the shoe doesn't fit, must we change the foot?

The only thing I can't stand is discomfort.

I think laughter is crucial. Some of the original cultures, like the Dalit and the Native American, don't separate laughter and seriousness.

I was rescued by librarians. It was librarians who said 'maybe you would like to read The Hardy Boys as well as Nancy Drew.' It is true for me, as for so many countless others, that librarians saved my life, my internal life.

The nineteenth-century wave of feminism was started by older women who had been through the radicalizing experience of getting married and becoming the legal chattel of their husbands (or the equally radicalizing experience of not getting married and being treated as spinsters).