I don't even remember what Mother and I quarreled about: it is a continual quarrel that began when I reached puberty.

I don't apologize for being sexually adventurous. Why not? It was often fun. When it wasn't - I didn't continue what wasn't pleasant.

I wrote to make sense out of all the contradictions I experienced and to deal with the pain and loss I was undergoing.

Writing is a futile attempt to preserve what disappears moment by moment. All that remains of my mother is what I remember and what I have written for and about her. Eventually that is all that will remain of [my husband] and me. Writing sometimes feels frivolous and sometimes sacred, but memory is one of my strongest muses. I serve her with my words. So long as people read, those we love survive however evanescently. As do we writers, saying with our life's work, Remember. Remember us. Remember me.

A strong woman is a woman determined to do something others are determined not be done.

All women are misfits. We do not fit into this world without amputations.

Nobody hates us as ourselves. In their minds we're not human... They don't hate us because we did something or said something. They make us stand for an evil they invent and then they want to kill it in us.