I encourage courtesy. To accept nothing less than courtesy, and to give nothing less than courtesy. If we accept being talked to any kind of a way, then we are telling ourselves we are not quite worth the best. And if we have the effrontery to talk to anybody with less than courtesy, we tell ourselves and the world we are not very intelligent.

I'm interested in women's health because I'm a woman. I'd be a darn fool not to be on my own side.

If I'm the people's poet, then I ought to be in people's hands - and, I hope, in their heart.

I answer the heroic question, 'Death, where is thy sting?' with 'It is in my heart and mind and memories.

I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.

When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature.

Among other things, I'm thinking "I'm a child of God." That's amazing. And "I'm not only a child of God, but God loves me." The hardest part for me is to realize that while God loves me, and I am a child of God, I have to see the bigot and the brute and the rapist, and whether he or she knows it or not, I have to know that that person is a child of God. That is part of the responsibility - and it's hard.