“What's the link between the woman who boldly fights for social justice and the one who boldly has fun? Both are acting powerfully, because each is rejecting preconceived notions of how females 'should' behave.”

“Enjoy being bold, and if that is scary at first, marvel at your ability to walk through fear.”

“For any one group to be free, everyone needs to be free no one should be stopped-not by stereotyping, not by violence-from expressing his or her full range of emotions and abilities.”

“The tenacity and fearlessness I had witnessed in the people—our guides, the young rebels in the boat, the nun—and the inspiring way they conducted their lives in the face of constant danger, helped me to see that the distinction between what we think we cannot do and what we must do is often not a matter of choice. On a personal level, I was brought face-to-face with my own fears, which I discovered were more relenting than I had thought. Experiencing fear can paradoxically move us more toward courage than cowardice.”

“When I was growing up, no one could get away with telling me I couldn't do something "because you're a girl." In fact, if someone wanted me not to do something, that was the worst thing they could say: It practically guaranteed I'd run out and try to do it.”

“To look deep into your child's eyes and see in him both yourself and something utterly strange, and then to develop a zealous attachment to every aspect of him, is to achieve parenthood's self-regarding, yet unselfish, abandon. It is astonishing how often such mutuality had been realized - how frequently parents who had supposed that they couldn't care for an exceptional child discover that they can. The parental predisposition to love prevails in the most harrowing of circumstances. There is more imagination in the world than one might think.”

“That, in essence, is the catastrophe of suicide for those who survive: not only the loss of someone, but the loss of the chance to persuade that person to act differently, the loss of the chance to connect.”