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.

The most common characteristic of women's history is to be lost and discovered, lost again and rediscovered, lost once more and re-rediscovered - a process of tragic waste and terrible silences that will continue until women's stories are a full and equal part of the human story.

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

We are literally linked in a circle, including with nature, as well as with other human beings. Old societies didn't have and still don't have "he" and "she." They don't have gendered pronouns. They don't have a word for nature, because we're not separate from nature.

It used to be said that this country was a child-centered one. Nothing could be further from the truth. Children have been our lowest priority, both in economic and emotional spending.

A good friendship is a conversation that never ends.

I think my role is as a writer, especially, and then also as a speaker, an organizer, and an entre- preneur of social change. My role isn't to make choices for people-each individual or group needs to do that on their own. But as a writer and a speaker, you can describe possibilities that perhaps haven't been visible before, and aren't in other public dialogues or in the rest of the media. So I suppose I think of myself mainly as an organizer and as someone who describes possibilities.