“Because adventure starts the moment I leave my door.” 

“At my age, in this still hierarchical time, people often ask me if I’m “passing the torch.” I explain that I’m keeping my torch, thank you very much—and I’m using it to light the torches of others.” 

“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.” 

“Like the spider spinning its web, we create much of the outer world from within ourselves. The universe is a joint product of the observer and the observed.” 

“And I was angry because the media took racism seriously - or pretended to - but with sexism, they rarely bothered even to pretend.” 

“I’ve learned from these events that self-esteem plays as much a part in the destiny of nations as it does in the lives of individuals; that self-hatred leads to the need either to dominate or to be dominated; that citizens who refuse to obey anything but their own conscience can transform their countries; in short, that self-esteem is the basis of any real democracy.” 

“I’ve learned from these events that self-esteem plays as much a part in the destiny of nations as it does in the lives of individuals; that self-hatred leads to the need either to dominate or to be dominated; that citizens who refuse to obey anything but their own conscience can transform their countries; in short, that self-esteem is the basis of any real democracy.” 

“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.” 

“If you travel long enough, every story becomes a novel.” 

“the most reliable predictor of whether a country is violent within itself—or will use military violence against another country—is not poverty, natural resources, religion, or even degree of democracy; it’s violence against females. It normalizes all other violence.” 

“We need to unlearn our respect for education, since it has undermined our respect for ourselves. It's worth taking time to demistify it. [...] All the things an adolescent can be [...] are reduced to a three digit number. [...] We too can decide how to value our education instead of letting them value us.” 

“Sometimes when I'm in the midst of all this, I can hear my mother saying, 'Democracy is just something you must do every day, like brushing your teeth.” 

“According to the wisdom of Indian Country on my own continent, it takes four generations to heal one act of violence. What” 

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

“Laughter is the only free emotion - the only one that can't be compelled. We can be made to fear. We can even be made to believe we're in love because, if we're kept dependent and isolated for long enough, we bond in order to survive. But laughter explodes like an aha! It comes when the punch line changes everything that has gone before, when two opposites collide and make a third and when we suddenly see a new reality...laughter is an orgasm of the mind.” 

“YOU CANNOT THINK YOURSELF INTO RIGHT LIVING. YOU LIVE YOURSELF INTO RIGHT THINKING

“I began to understand with a terrible sureness that we teach what we need to learn and write what we need to know.” 

“It's important for someone who could play the game - and win - to say: 'the game isn't worth shit.” 

“Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.” 

“Since learning causes our brains to grow new synapses, I like to believe that the road is sharpening my mind and lengthening my life with surprise.” 

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

“We are so different, yet so much the same.” 

“Wherever I go, bookstores are still the closest thing to a town square.” 

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