How [stories] are told, who tells them, when they’re told, how many stories are told — are really dependent on power.

Never ever accept 'Because You Are A Woman' as a reason for doing or not doing anything.

The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.

We teach girls shame; close your legs, cover yourself, we make them feel as though by being born female they're already guilty of something.

To choose to write is to reject silence.

Of course I am not worried about intimidating men. The type of man who will be intimidated by me is exactly the type of man I have no interest in.

If you start thinking about being likable you are not going to tell your story honestly.

There are people who dislike you because you do not dislike yourself.

Our society teaches a woman at a certain age who is unmarried to see it as a deep personal failure. While a man at a certain age who is unmarried has not quite come around to making his pick.

Privilege blinds, because it's in its nature to blind. Don't let it blind you too often. Sometimes you will need to push it aside in order to see clearly.

Culture does not make people. People make culture.

All that stuff - 'teen idol' - that wasn't me.

As we get older, life becomes very complicated in terms of concessions we have to make.

Truth and beauty can still win battles. We need more art, more passion, more wit in defense of the Earth.

Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.

If God hath made this world so fair, Where sin and death abound, How beautiful beyond compare Will paradise be found!

Time, time will heal the wound.

The only work of art which succeeds is that which fails.

I worked with John, but I had enough sense to walk just a little ways behind him. I could have made more records, but I wanted to have a marriage.

To understand the living present, and the promise of the future, it is necessary to remember the past.

...You can make a positive out of most any negative if you work at it hard enough.