Courage Is Not Defined By

But Can You Imagine How Some Of Them Were Envying You Your Freedom To Work, To Think, To Travel, To Enter A Room As Yourself, Not As Some Child’s Mother Or Some Man’s Wife?…we Have No Familiar, Ready-made Name For A Woman Who Defines Herself, By Choice, Neither In Relation To Children Nor To Men, Who Is Self-identified, Who Has Chosen Herself.

The Unconscious Wants Truth, As The Body Does. The Complexity And Fecundity Of Dreams Come From The Complexity And Fecundity Of The Unconscious Struggling To Fulfill That Desire. The Complexity And Fecundity Of Poetry Come From The Same Struggle.

There Is No Simple Formula For The Relationship Of Art To Justice...in The End, I Don’t Think We Can Separate Art From Overall Human Dignity And Hope. My Concern For My Country Is Inextricable From My Concerns As An Artist.

Women Have Been Driven Mad, “gaslighted”, For Centuries By The Refutation Of Our Experience And Our Instincts In A Culture Which Validates Only Male Experience. The Truth Of Our Bodies And Our Minds Has Been Mystified To Us. We Therefore Have Primary Obligation To Each Other: Not To Undermine Each Other’s Sense Of Reality For The Sake Of Expediency; Not To Gaslight Each Other.

... How Have I Used Rivers, How Have I Used Wars To Escape Writing Of The Worst Thing Of All-- Not The Crimes Of Other, Not Even Our Own Death, But The Failure To Want Our Freedom Passionately Enough So That Blighted Elms, Sick Rivers, Massacres Would Seem Mere Emblems Of That Desecration Of Ourselves?