“The uncomfortable truth seems to be that the amount of talk by women has been measured less against the amount of men's talk than against the expectation of female silence.” 

“There is power in proximity. Get close to the problem you feel drawn to. Change the narrative. Stay hopeful. Be willing to do uncomfortable things.” 

“Secrets have power only as long as they are secret.” 

“MY LAST HOPE IS to open up the road—literally. So far it’s been overwhelmingly masculine turf. Men embody adventure, women embody hearth and home, and that has been pretty much it.” 

“Thinking about our schooling in different decades and parts of the country, all three of us in that kitchen discover that we were taught more about ancient Greece and Rome than about the history of the land we live on. We learned about the pyramid builders of Egypt but not the pyramid builders of the Mississippi River.” 

“This was my first hint of the truism that depression is anger turned inward; thus women are twice as likely to be depressed.” 

“Only after I saw women who were attracted to distant, condescending, even violent men did I begin to understand that having a distant, condescending, even violent father could make those qualities seem inevitable, even feel like home. Because of my father, only kindness felt like home.” 

“A feminist is anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men.” 

“Men should think twice before making widowhood women's only path to power.”

“Women may be the one group that grows more radical with age.” 

“Women may be the one group that grows more radical with age.” 

“Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke . . . She will need her sisterhood.” 

“We are becoming the men we wanted to marry” 

“I myself cried when I got angry, then became unable to explain why I was angry in the first place. Later I would discover this was endemic among female human beings. Anger is supposed to be "unfeminine" so we suppress it -until it overflows. I could see that not speaking up made my mother feel worse. This was my first hint of the truism that depression is anger turned inward; thus women are twice as likely to be depressed. My mother paid a high price for caring so much, yet being able to do so little about it. In this way, she led me toward am activist place where she herself could never go.” 

“You should write about take no-shit women like me. Girls need to know they can break the rules" p.79” 

“Women have two choices: Either she's a feminist or a masochist.” 

“Sometimes I think the only real division into two is between people who divide everything into two and those who don't.” 

“As Robin Morgan wrote so wisely, "Hate generalizes, love specifies". Thats what makes going on the road so important. It definitely specifies.” 

“Feminism...is not 'women as victims' but women refusing to be victims.” 

“I was angry because young men in politics were treated like rising stars and young women were treated like - well - young women. {...}

I was angry about the human talent that was lost just because it was born into a female body, and the mediocrity that was rewarded because it was born into a male one.

“Feminism is memory.” 

“When people ask me why I still have hope and energy after all these years, I always say: Because I travel.” 

“Don't write when you're angry and under deadline, with time to test it only on friends who know what you mean, not on strangers who don't.” 

“Women are always better liked if we sacrifice ourselves for something bigger - and something bigger always means including men, even though something bigger for men doesn't usually mean including women.” 

“My father did not have to trade dying alone for the joys of the road. My mother did not have to give up a journey of her own to have a home. Neither do I. Neither do you.” 

“Being graded for memorizing male accomplishments with the deep message that we can learn what others do but never do it ourselves.” 

“Or perhaps it's "activist," but on environmental and economic problems, without understanding that pressuring women to have too many children is the biggest cause of environmental distress, and economic courses should start with reproduction, not just production.” 

“As feminism has changed academia by enlarging what is taught, academia has sometimes changed feminism.” 

“In the same way that individual women are often underestimated, a movement of women is also understimated, but the truth is that, if people realize someone is willing to talk about these deep and daily concerns, they show up.” 

“The idea that women are 'our own worst enemies' forces us to admit that we don't have the power to be, even if we wanted too.” 

“I also noticed that humor was even more of a survival tactic here than in most women's groups. As one asked: What did Columbus call primitive? Answer: Equal women.” 

“Power is being redefined. Women often explain with care that we mean power to control our lives, but not to dominate others.” 

“Perhaps that's the first Survival Lesson we need to remember if we are to keep going: serious opposition is a measure of success. Women have been trained to measure our effectiveness in love and approval, not in conflict and resistance.” 

“It's time to leave. There is so much out there to do and say and listen to. I can go on the road, because I can come home. I come home, because I am free to leave.” 

“I myself cried when I got angry, then became unable to explain why I was angry in the first place. Later I would discover this was endemic among female human beings. Anger is supposed to be "unfeminine", so we suppress it-until it overflows.” 

“Only food and water are more important than music and privacy,” 

“On the road, I learned that the media are not reality; reality is reality.” 

“In retrospect, perhaps the biggest reason my mother was cared for but not helped for twenty years was the simplest: Her functioning was not that necessary to the world.”

“Always look at what people do, not who they are.” 

“Always look at what people do, not who they are.” 

“Perhaps our need to escape into media is a misplaced desire for the journey.” 

“I can go on the road - because I can come home. I come home - because I'm free to leave. Each way of being is more valued in the presence of the other.” 

“I'm also now immune to politicians who say, "I've traveled the length and breadth of this great land, and I know..." I've traveled more than any of them, and I don't know.” 

“We learn most where we know the least.” 

“I've noticed that great political leaders are energized by conflict. I'm energized by listening to people's stories and trying to figure out shared solutions. That's the work of an organizer.” 

“What we’re told about this country is way too limited by generalities, sound bites, and even the supposedly enlightened idea that there are two sides to every question. In fact, many questions have three or seven or a dozen sides.” 

“We are all trained to be female impersonators.” 

“The driver, an old Irish woman, the only such cabbie I’ve ever seen, turned to us at a traffic light and said the immortal words, “Honey, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament!” 

“I worshipped dead men for their strength, forgetting I was strong.”