“I remember Spider Woman from the first page of Leslie’s novel Ceremony. She is the Thought Woman who names things and so brings them into being. Until then, I had imagined myself alone in believing that spiders should be the totem of writers. Both go into a space alone and spin out of their own bodies a reality that has never existed before.” 

“Needing approval is a female cultural disease, and often a sign of doing the wrong thing.” 

“Perhaps the most revolutionary act for a woman will be a self-willed journey—and to be welcomed when she comes home.” 

“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!” 

“We are all trained to be female impersonators.” 

My success has allowed me to strike out with a higher class of women.

“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.” 

“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.” 

“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.” 

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

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

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

“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.” 

“We are becoming the men we wanted to marry” 

“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.” 

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

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

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

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

“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.” 

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

“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.” 

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

“the most revolutionary act for a woman will be a self-willed journey—and to be welcomed when she comes home.”