Reporters immediately push their interviewees into the most extreme version by saying in a shocked tone, 'Well, are you saying that ..." They're trying to make people be as hostile and opposed to each other as possible because they think only conflict is news.

it's possible to be pro-sex and anti-pornography.

... we've allowed a youth-centered culture to leave us so estranged from our future selves that, when asked about the years beyondfifty, sixty, or seventy--all part of the average human life span providing we can escape hunger, violence, and other epidemics--many people can see only a blank screen, or one on which they project fear of disease and democracy.

There is a naive belief that injustice only had to be pointed out in order to be cured.

I once fell in love with a man only because we both belonged to that large and secret club of children who had "crazy mothers." We traded stories of the shameless houses to which we could never invite our friends.

[Erotica] contains the idea of love, positive choice, and the yearning for a particular person.

My father was the Jewish half of the family, yet it was my mother who taught me to have pride in that tradition.