I started writing because I had a need inside of me to create something that was not there

It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.

When I dare to be powerful - to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.

There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.

Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.

When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.

If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.

I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.

Tomorrow belongs to those of us who conceive of it as belonging to everyone; who lend the best of ourselves to it, and with joy.

I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.

If I cannot air this pain and alter it, I will surely die of it. That's the beginning of social protest.

If you desire peace, begin to pray.

Divorce in a young-adult novel means what being orphaned meant in a fairy tale: vulnerability, danger, unwanted independence.

Feminism, Socialism, and Communism are one in the same, and Socialist/Communist government is the goal of feminism.

The universe, he observed, makes rather an indifferent parent, I am afraid.

All professionals, whether physicists, economists or musicians, live by and for peer judgment, even when they are being paid by people who cannot tell the difference.

Bad Boys II has knocked everyone's socks off.

My guitar player calls the process of writing lyrics based on another story, "filling up the well" when you can get inspiration from other people's art without stealing, more being influenced by it.

The success of Torn was a bit too much for me. I took a year off and was still scared to start the second album.

The happiest moments we ever know are when we entirely forget ourselves.

There aren't any great men. There are just great challenges that ordinary men like you and me are forced by circumstances to meet.