“Freedom is a loose leash, license to be different from your mother and still be loved…Freedom is…not insisting that your daughter share your limitations. Freedom also means letting your daughter reject you when she needs to and come back when she needs to. Freedom is unconditional love.”

And what if I don’t want forgiveness?

The soul is awakened through service.

Many people today believe that cynicism requires courage. Actually, cynicism is the height of cowardice. It is innocence and open-heartednes s that requires the true courage — however often we are hurt as a result of it.

My mother wanted me to be her wings, to fly as she never quite had the courage to do. I love her for that. I love the fact that she wanted to give birth to her own wings.

Shakespeare wrote without knowing he would become Shakespeare

There is no loneliness like the loneliness of a dead marriage.

You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.

Solitude is un-American.

My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you’ll be happy; if not, you’ll become a philosopher.” – Socrates (470-399 B.C.) “Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t

The sexuality doesn’t end. It really doesn’t. You’re sexual your whole life, if you’re a sexual person.

A book burrows into your life in a very profound way because the experience of reading is not passive.

Women are their own worst enemies. And guilt is the main weapon of self-torture . . . Show me a woman who doesn’t feel guilty and I’ll show you a man.

In a world where women work three times as hard for half as much, our achievement has been denigrated, both marriage and divorce have turned against us, our motherhood has been used as an obstacle to our success, our passion as a trap.

I stand in the mist and cry, thinking of myself standing in the mist and crying, and wondering if I will ever be able to use this experience in a book.

If, every day, I dare to remember that I am here on loan, that this house, this hillside, these minutes are all leased to me, not given, I will never despair.

You cannot divide creative juices from human juices. And as long as juicy women are equated with bad women, we will err on the side of being bad.

We need to be pro-science; we have to go back to science.

If we have George W. Bush as president, we’re going to go back to the kind of policies we had when his father and Ronald Reagan were president.

Having a life in transit, I feel like you are always looking out the back window.

It puts domestic problems back into proportion and adds an element of seriousness to your drab, routine life.

We just do what we do, we’re grateful every night when there’s people in front of the stage and singing our songs back at us.

I love Toronto. I love it. I love Toronto. I love Canada. I can’t wait to get back. Can’t wait to have some Timbits.

One time, my mom told us, ‘No TV.’ It was 3 P.M., and I was sneaking it in. She put her hand on the back of the TV to see if it was warm, and it was.

When women push their headscarf back an inch or two, this is interpreted to be a political act.