Today's wars are about oil. But alternate energies exist now - solar, wind - for every important energy-using activity in our lives. The only human work that cannot be done without oil is war.

Let us go forth with fear and courage and rage to save the world.

People will sometimes say, "Why don't you write more politics?" And I have to explain to them that writing the lives of women IS politics.

Write what will stop your breath if you don’t write.

Sometimes you find that what is most personal is also what connects you most strongly with others.

Sometimes, walking with a friend, I forget the world.

Women should stick together. Didn’t you learn anything yet?

All that is really necessary for survival of the fittest, it seems, is an interest in life, good, bad or peculiar.

Literature, fiction, poetry, whatever, makes justice in the world. That's why it almost always has to be on the side of the underdog.

I lived in a house in the East Bronx, a totally Jewish neighborhood on East 172nd Street. You didn't see Christians much, although one lived next door. We thought they were kind of a minority.

The only recognizable feature of hope is action.

There. There you are. You have dropped a marker pin on your body, to reclaim yourself, to remind you where you are: inside yourself. Somewhere. Somewhere in there.

I just figured that was the life I picked, so I had to make the most of it.

Some stories we know well and some we learn as we go. Being able to shape and share these stories into new perspectives and new ideas is incredibly gratifying.

Jimmy says he'll never tell a lie. Well, I lie all the time. 1 have to - to balance the family ticket.

The bonds that unite us to another human being are sanctified when he or she adopts the same point of view as ourselves in judging one of our imperfections.

I think that emotion and good stories can cross the times.

A messy participatory process is representative democracy at its best.

Low-wage workers are also consumers. It's just common sense: when these workers have more take-home pay it leads to spending that trickles up to benefit many small, locally owned businesses.

Black men - one might be the president. Well, America's in too much trouble - I don't want that job now.

If you do weave one-liners into a story, you have to have an overall story as well, otherwise it doesn't really count as narrative.