“When I talk of taking a trip I mean forever.”

“Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you...it means that you do not treat your body as a commodity with which to purchase superficial intimacy or economic security; for our bodies to be treated as objects, our minds are in mortal danger. It means insisting that those to whom you give your friendship and love are able to respect your mind. It means being able to say, with Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre: "I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all the extraneous delights should be withheld or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.Responsibility to yourself means that you don't fall for shallow and easy solutions--predigested books and ideas...marrying early as an escape from real decisions, getting pregnant as an evasion of already existing problems. It means that you refuse to sell your talents and aspirations short...and this, in turn, means resisting the forces in society which say that women should be nice, play safe, have low professional expectations, drown in love and forget about work, live through others, and stay in the places assigned to us. It means that we insist on a life of meaningful work, insist that work be as meaningful as love and friendship in our lives. It means, therefore, the courage to be "different"...The difference between a life lived actively, and a life of passive drifting and dispersal of energies, is an immense difference. Once we begin to feel committed to our lives, responsible to ourselves, we can never again be satisfied with the old, passive way.”

“It will take all your heart, it will take all your breathIt will be short, it will not be simple”

“FINAL NOTATIONSit will not be simple, it will not be longit will take little time, it will take all your thoughtit will take all your heart, it will take all your breathit will be short, it will not be simpleit will touch you through your ribs, it will take all your heartit will not be long, it will occupy your thoughtas a city is occupied, as a bed is occupiedit will take all your flesh, it will not be simpleyou are coming into us who cannot withstand youyou are coming into us who never wanted to withstand youyou are taking parts of us into places never plannedyou are going far away with pieces of our livesit will be short, it will take all your breathit will not be simple, it will become your will”

“That's why I want to speak to you now.To say: no person, trying to take responsibility for her or his identity, should have to be so alone. There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep, and still be counted as warriors. (I make up this strange, angry packet for you, threaded with love.)I think you thought there was no such place for you, and perhaps there was none then, and perhaps there is none now; but we will have to make it, we who want an end to suffering, who want to change the laws of history, if we are not to give ourselves away.”

“Truthfulness, honor, is not something which springs ablaze of itself; it has to be created between people. This is true in political situations. The quality and depth of the politics evolving from a group depends in large part on their understanding of honor. Much of what is narrowly termed "politics" seems to rest on a longing for certainty even at the cost of honesty, for an analysis which, once given, need not be re-examined…It isn't that to have an honorable relationship with you, I have to understand everything, or tell you everything at once, or that I can know, beforehand, everything I need to tell you. It means that most of the time I am eager, longing for the possibility of telling you. That these possibilities may seem frightening, but not destructive to me. That I feel strong enough to hear your tentative and groping words. That we both know we are trying, all the time, to extend the possibilities of truth between us.”

“Flags are blossoming now where little else is blossomingand I am bent on fathoming what it means to love my country. The history of this earth and the bones within it?Minerals, traces, rumors I am made from, morsel, minuscule fibre, one womanlike and unlike so many, fooled as to her destiny, the scope of her task?One citizen like and unlike so many, touched and untouched in passing…A patriot is not a weapon. A patriot us one who wrestles for the soul of her countryas she wrestles for her own being, for the soul of his country…”