“If you believe in your heart that you are right, then you must fight with all your might to do it your way. Only dead fish swim with the stream all the time.”

“I think laughter may be a form of courage. As humans we sometimes stand tall and look into the sun and laugh, and I think we are never more brave than when we do that.”

“It's not just the cheerleading thing I have a problem with, it's the whole jock enchilada. I'm all for a good game of basketball in teh driveway or a killer bike ride. But when there's tackling and...”

“People are pretty much alike. It's only that our differences are more susceptible to definition than our similarities.”

“I think laughter may be a form of courage.... As humans we sometimes stand tall and look into the sun and laugh and I think we are never more brave than when we do that.”

“[My father] was generous with his affection given to great awkward engulfing hugs and I can remember so clearly the smell of his hugs all starched shirt tobacco Old Spice and Cutty Sark. So...”

“There are many things that make a man irritable when he arrives home from work in the evening and a sensible wife will usually notice the storm-signals and will leave him alone until he simmers down.”

“Oblivion, she thought. That was the world she lived in. It was what they should name some countries, towns, and places.”

“A lot of men wouldn't like being called a romantic. It's not macho enough.'Quite often men are fools.”

“No black woman writer in this culture can write "too much". Indeed, no woman writer can write "too much"...No woman has ever written enough.”

“When you reduce a woman to writing, she makes you think of a thousand other women”

“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”