Later, she would remember these years, and realize with astonishment that she had, by fifteen, decided on most of the assumptions she would carry for the rest of her life: that people were essentially not evil, that perfection was death, that life was better than order and a little chaos good for the soul. Most important, this life was all. Unfortunately, she forgot these things, and had to remember them the hard way.

The very notion of superiority of one kind over another will have to disappear, although differences among kind will remain.

If you ask me what I believe in today, I believe in feminism. I believe that all human beings are equal. I believe that no one has the right to authority over anyone else. Feminism has to do with everything in the world, a vision of how the world can be. I have great doubts about Utopias, but I just keep on thinking there is a better way to live than the way we live now.

All patriarchists exalt the home and family as sacred, demanding it remain inviolate from prying eyes. Men want privacy for their violations of women... All women learn in childhood that women as a sex are men's prey.

To nourish children and raise them against odds is in any time, any place, more valuable than to fix bolts in cars or design nuclear weapons.

It isn't success after all, is it, if it isn't an expression of your deepest energies?

When they kept you out it was because you were black; when they let you in, it is because you are black. That's progress?