You know, in Hollywood you know when somebody is getting pregnant. It's supposed to be this beautiful scene: the rays are coming in and you have these beautiful perfect bodies lying on top of each other and there's the room glowing in one person's eyes and the sun coming up over the other person's shoulder.

I think one of the most radical things a girl can do is to own her body. And we learn so young not to own these bodies of ours.

I want to go down in history in a chapter marked miscellaneous because the writers could find no other way to categorize me In this world where classification is key I want to erase the straight lines So I can be me

What's surprising to me now is that now that I'm talking to a lot of women about this, so many women are doing this. Straight women, lesbian women, bisexual women, poor women, White women, immigrant women. This does not affect one group.

There are those nights where you are just so emotionally present that you crack yourself open. And it works. And on the nights when you don't have it in you because you're tired or you've got no voice, you still are able to do your job and tell the story that people have come to hear.

When you are doing seven shows a week, you have to take care of yourself. There are some moments when you cannot allow yourself to emotionally reenact the issue you're talking about or the experience that you're remembering. I mean that would kill you, you know. To experience a thing, a trauma, every single night, it would probably kill you emotionally.

Every day I get better at knowing that it is not a choice to be an activist; rather, it is the only way to hold on to the better parts of my human self. It is the only way I can live and laugh without guilt.