“We're in the Chicago suburbs, ruling our 'hood and the streets that lead here. It's a street war, where othersuburban gangs fight us for territory. Three blocks away are mansions and million-dollar houses. Right here,in the real world, the street war rages on. The people in the million-dollar houses don't even realize a battle isabout to begin less than a half mile from their backyards.”

“Such dreary streets! blocks of blackness, not houses, on either hand, and here and there a candle, like a candle moving about in a tomb.”

“I was taught that candles are like house cats - domesticated versions of something wild and dangerous. There's no way to know how much of that killer instinct lurks in the darkness. I used to think the house-burning paranoia was the result of some upper-middle-class fear regarding the potential destruction of a half-million-dollar Westchester house the size of a matchbox. But then I realized the fear stemmed from something far less complex: we're not used to fire. Candles are a staple of the Judaic existence and, like many suburban residents before us, we're pretty bad Jews.”

“Honest, open communication is the only street that leads us into the real world... We then begin to grow as never before. And once we are on this road, happiness cannot be far away.”

“You don't need millions of dollars or millions of people if you're doing what you love.”

“Women deserve better than organizations bearing the names of racist rapists funding million dollar campaigns on subway trains. These wealthy middle aged white men tell us what to do with our bodies while they wage wars and kill other people's babies.”