“Spontaneity is that exact intersection of the conscious and the subconscious, when what is intuitive and invisible leaps into our awareness, ready for us to deal with it, to wrestle with it and to shape it into art.”

“When an artist improvises and plays, she allows her intuitive self to meet up with her conscious mind.”

“Dip your hands into life, scoop up memories, dreams, questions and ideas and weave them into stories.”

“Enough of that, you damned conspirators, you will have us hanged a great deal sooner than we will.”

“When novelist Margaret Atwood asked women what they feared most from men, they said: 'We're afraid they'll kill us.' When men were asked the same question about women, they said: 'we're afraid they'll laugh at us.”

“And we must still try or we would be leaving our friends to fight without us. I think this is what you have meant by duty, all along; I do understand, at least this much of it.”

“Dissident Natan Sharansky writes that there are two kinds of states -- "fear societies" and "free societies," two kinds of consciousness. The consciousness derived of oppression is despairing, fatalistic, and fearful of inquiry. It is mistrustful of the self and forced to trust external authority. It is premised on a dearth of self-respect. It is cramped.In contrast, the consciousness of freedom is one of expansiveness, trust of the self, and hope. It is a consciousness of limitless inquiry. It builds up in a citizen a wealth of self-respect.”