“Time can divorce us from the reality of people, it can separate us from people and turn them into ghosts. Or rather it is we who turn them into ghosts or demons. Some kinds of fruitless preoccupations with the past can create such simulacra, and they can exercise power, like those heroes at Troy fighting for a phantom Helen.”

“Through reading literature we can make ghosts speak to us, and we can speak back to them.”

“The people who lead us are of us. We put them in office and we can take them out. America proves that the people can govern themselves.”

“The truth is everything in the end. It is the greatest power in the world to make all people equal. If everyone knows what the truth is, no one can use lies to separate those people and turn them against one another.”

“Psychoanalysis is often about turning our ghosts into ancestors, even for patients who have not lost loved ones to death. We are often haunted by important relationships from the past that influence us unconsciously in the present. As we work them through, they go from haunting us to becoming simply part of our history.”

“A woman's sense of self and power should come not from the number of heads she can turn, but rather from the minds and hearts she can turn.”