Over the years, I've found that I either live life or write about it. I can't seem to do both simultaneously - I have to do it sequentially. When I write incessantly, I lose touch with the issues and passions that fuel the work. But when I get too involved in organizations or movement endeavors, I almost forget that I'm a writer. It's a constant struggle to find a balance between these two worlds - the solitary writing life and the life of a social justice activist.

If the family were a fruit, it would be an orange, a circle of sections, held together but separable - each segment distinct.

To me, a person's identity is composed of both an 'I' and a 'we.' The 'I' finds itself in love, work, and pleasure, but it also locates itself within some meaningful group identity - a tribe, a community, a 'we.' America is too big and bland a tribe for most of us.

I didn't anticipate the primal quality of my pleasure, the raw physicality of it, the way my whole body leaps forward when I see my grandsons after a few days' absence.

Housework is the only activity at which men are allowed to be consistently inept because they are thought to be so competent at everything else.

I want to visit Memory Lane, I don't want to live there.

Before devising any blueprint that includes the assumption of Having It All, we need to ask ... Why do we need Everything?