To get to a place where you could love anything you chose--not to need permission for desire--well now _that_ was freedom.

If you're going to hold someone down you're going to have to hold on by the other end of the chain. You are confined by your own repression.

Like friendship, hatred needed more than physical intimacy; it wanted creativity and hard work to sustain itself

There is a certain kind of peace that is not merely the absence of war. It is larger than that. The peace I am thinking of is not at the mercy of history's rule, nor is it a passive surrender to the status quo. The peace I am thinking of is the dance of an open mind when it engages another equally open one -- an activity that occurs most naturally, most often in the reading/writing world we live in. Accessible as it is, this particular kind of peace warrants vigilance.

The enemy is not men. The enemy is the concept of patriarchy, the concept of patriarchy as the way to run the world or do things.

In times of dread, artists must never choose to remain silent.

I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it.