My heart breaks living in southern Utah on the edge of America's Redrock Wilderness, witnessing what the Bush Administration's policies regarding oil and gas exploitation are doing to our public lands that belong to all Americans. Their policy is not about the public or the public's best interest. It is about the oil and gas corporations' best interests. The Secretary of the Interior is urging the Bureau of Land Management to support the gas and oil industry's most extreme drilling scenario in some of the American West's most pristine and fragile areas without proper legal and public input.

When I look in the mirror, I see a woman with secrets. When we don’t listen to our intuition, we abandon our souls. And we abandon our souls because we are afraid if we don’t, others will abandon us.

I don't think of myself as an American; I see myself as a human being.

There are times we have to put our body on the line for what we believe, for the injustices we see even within our own families.

This is the sorcery of literature. We are healed by our stories.

Buddha says there are two kinds of suffering: the kind that leads to more suffering and the kind that brings an end to suffering.

When I said, "I am my mother, but I'm not," I was saying my path would be my own.