“His shadow stretched out past mine. I remembered Mom telling me how frightening men were, all men really, how helpless it often felt to be a woman among men, and for the first time I understood wha...”

“[S]omething had to change. Because I had changed.”

“I have a past, okay? And you really don't want to get involved with it.''Everybody's got a past,' he said. 'That doesn't mean you can't have a future.”

“Maybe secrets were part of life; maybe everyone had something they were lying to themselves about, or something they were hiding.I looked up at the cross again and wondered if I was supposed to hea...”

“The symbol of Goddess gives us permission. She teaches us to embrace the holiness of every natural, ordinary, sensual dying moment. Patriarchy may try to negate body and flee earth with its constan...”

“... the effort to discover an authentic self, to strip away layers of alienation and culturally imposed identity and find a soul in a clear, unimpeded communion with the sacred is consonant with sp...”

“I'm a queen with or without a king. Chasing anything is beneath me. Until you're ready to put away childish things and be my man, my king, someone I can trust to shepard my soul to the Almighty I h...”

“Until that moment I'd thought I could have it both ways; to be one of them, and also my husband's wife. What conceit! I was his instrument, his animal. Nothing more. How we wives and mothers do per...”

“I am afraid of sex as sex is defined by the dominant culture, as practiced all around me, and projected onto magazine pages, billboards, and movie screens. I am afraid of sex because I am afraid of...”

“Male dominance in society always means that out of public sight, in the private, ahistorical world of men with women, men are sexually dominating women.”