Telling a story of illness, one pulls a thread through a narrow opening flanked on one side by shame and the other by trivia.

Yes we are devilish; that is true we cackle. Yes we are dark like the soil and wild like the animals. And we turn to each other and stare into this darkness. We find it beautiful. We find this darkness irresistible. We cease all hiding.

Even in the grimmest of circumstances, a shift in perspective can create startling change.

A story is told as much by silence as by speech.

Just as the slave master required the slaves to imitate the image he had of them, so women, who live in a relatively powerless position, politically and economically, feel obliged by a kind of implicit force to live up to culture's image of what is female.

In one sense I feel that my book is a one-woman argument against determinism.

Waging war is not a primary physical need.