Freedom within any kind of social structure - the whole issue of exactly what the human animal is - is an ongoing preoccupation of mine. And I certainly don't think I've come to the end of that exploration, and with any luck, I never will. But I'm very curious about exactly what kind of beast we are. We're so complicated.

I have been a believer in the magic of language since, at a very early age, I discovered that some words got me into trouble and others got me out.

In our struggle to restrain the violence and contain the damage, we tend to forget that the human capacity for aggression is more than a monstrous defect, that it is also a crucial survival tool.

Women who pay their own rent don't have to be nice.

When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets," Papa would say, "she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing.

But the animation has become very good, and I think that a movie is not a book, and a book is not a movie.

I am here, come closer," the old donkey said with her eyes. "I will mother you.