The fact that we are human beings is infinitely more important than all the peculiarities that distinguish human beings from one another.

The point is not for women simply to take power out of men’s hands, since that wouldn’t change anything about the world. It’s a question precisely of destroying that notion of power.

No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility.

Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.

I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely. No one knows me or loves me completely. I have only myself

One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion.

All oppression creates a state of war.

To be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future.

When women act like women, they are accused of being inferior. When women act like human beings, they are accused of behaving like men.

I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me.

When I was a child, when I was an adolescent, books saved me from despair: that convinced me that culture was the highest of values[...].

You may think that you don't want to read about the problems of being brought up Mennonite, but the great thing about books is that you'll read anything a good writer wants you to read.

Fearful of wasting a second, we hoard time as if it were money.

My natural gravitation is toward the gray and the black and the white and the burgundy. Sort of muted, cool colors.

I read Noam Chomsky. I like some of Gore Vidal's stuff.

We're Jews. When you look at our pubic hair, it should look like Ewoks should be in there.

Extreme good, extreme evil: the abilities required are similar.

Christmas garland and a rock?" he said, a smile in his voice."Why not an ornament?" "Wolves aren't fragile," I told him. "And they're... stubbon and hard to move

Wanting to change, to improve, a person's situation means offering him, for difficulties in which he is practiced and experienced, other difficulties that will find him perhaps even more bewildered.

We never understood the concept of people going onstage and giving anything less than 100 percent. Maybe that's a blue-collar work ethic, but I call it just ethics.

I don't need to be 19 years old or starve myself for some weight or turn men's heads down that road. And thank God I finally know that.