“We don't always come out unbreakable the first time. So we are broken and rebuilt several times, until there is no question that we can stand on our own”

“What all of this suggests is that we need a more complex understandingof identities. If we identify on the basis of race, class, sexuality, orgender alone we cannot make sense of the ways these identificationscombine and change over time. The used-to-be-working class nowprofessional woman, the woman of mixed racial parentage who appearswhite, the divorced mother who is now a lesbian, the former lesbian whois now straight, or the former lesbian who is now a man. Identities arealways in motion; they are mobile (Ferguson, 1993). This is particularlythe case for those who have been placed in identity categories that do notquite seem to fit; it is also true of many more of us, in varied ways. Justask our current President, whose own origin story, of which he has spokenand written eloquently, is exceedingly complex. We need, I believe, aconception of identities that embraces this complexity, that takes intoaccount temporality and also specificity.”

“We can fight fire with water provided we can get it there soon enough. But often we act when it's too late. The result is splattered in the pages of our history: bloodbaths, uprisings, revolutions, you name. And on it goes. We learn so slowly. After so many centuries, we're still a people who eat fire and drink water.' 'Why bother,then?' 'Because we have to believe that one day we'll learn.”

“Trouble is a sieve through which we sift our acquaintances. Those too big to pass through are our friends.”

“Just being alive should make you late for everything. In case you've never noticed, the dead are always on time.”

“ALWAYS FULL OF QUESTIONS...How many times must I tell you, better to listen than to talk. But you're always talking...asking useless things...whatever for?""Because I want to know.”

“When all is said and done, later in this century, and in the next one, and the century after that, it will be understood that. . .the greatest American writer of our time was James M. Cain.”