Having the right to show up and speak are basic to survival, to dignity, and to liberty.

Every woman who appears wrestles with the forces that would have her disappear. She struggles with the forces that would tell her story for her, or write her out of the story ... The ability to tell your own story, in words or images, is already a victory, already a revolt.

Walking . . . is how the body measures itself against the earth.

Kindness and gentleness never had a gender, and neither did empathy.

Never to get lost is not to live, not to know how to get lost brings you to destruction.

Before writers are writers they are readers, living in books, through books, in the lives of others that are also the heads of others, in that act that is so intimate and yet so alone.

Too many of us seem far too fond of narratives of our powerlessness, maybe because powerlessness lets us off the hook... But we don't need everyone on board; we don't need one magic person in office; we need ourselves. To act. It's the wind, not the weathervanes.