The loss of a sexual life is one of the worst things about getting really old. The worst thing.

My husband regarded my prison past as a dirty secret and never asked me one single question about it. But what I had experienced and witnessed was eating at me and I needed to "tell somebody."

One of the principle things life has taught me is that we always have a choice. When we say we "can't," we usually mean we're just not willing to pay the price.

I'm actually a lowlife. On the street at fifteen and also in jail for the first time at that age, and off and on the street until my mid-twenties.

I don't believe anyone can go through the prison experience without being changed by it. The experience becomes part of your identity forever.

The fact that educated white women automatically assume that we have similar backgrounds annoys me. We don't. I feel like I'm in a certain kind of drag.

I can say now is that sneaking up on people is a major delight in my old age, but it always has been. A desire, even a need, to shock.