If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.

I will write on the pages of history what I want them to say. I will be myself. I will speak my own name.

Being a woman is hard work.

I love a statement by the apostle Paul, in the Book of Philippians in the Bible. I think the Corinthians had been writing to Paul, telling him that old men were chasing young women, nobody was tithing - and all that must have run Paul crazy. He wrote back and said, "If there be anything of good report, speak of these things." That's one of my principles.It's another discipline that I encourage myself to employ - to, as much as possible, say the courteous thing, and then be it.

By no amount of agile exercising of a wistful imagination could my mother have been called lenient. Generous she was; indulgent never. Kind, yes, permissive, never. In her world, people she accepted paddled their own canoes, pulled their own weight, put their own shoulders to their own plows and pushed like hell.

The intensity with which young people live demands that they "blank out" as often as possible.

The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.