A Burst of Light: and Other Essays

Overextending myself is not stretching myself. I had to accept how difficult it is to monitor the difference.

I am listening to what fear teaches. I will never be gone. I am a scar, a report from the frontlines, a talisman, a resurrection. A rough place on the chin of complacency.

While we fortify ourselves with visions of the future, we must arm ourselves with accurate perceptions of the barriers between us and that future.

Feminism must be on the cutting edge of real social change if it is to survive as a movement in any particular country. Whatever the core problems are for the people of that country must also be the core problems addressed by women, for we do not exist in a vacuum.

When language becomes most similar, it becomes most dangerous, for then differences may pass unremarked.

Survival isn’t some theory operating in a vacuum. It’s a matter of my everyday living and making decisions.

As a living creature I am part of two kinds of forces—growth and decay, sprouting and withering, living and dying, and at any given moment of our lives, each one of us is actively located somewhere along a continuum between these two forces.

I train myself for triumph by knowing it is mine, no matter what.