She will walk in strength like a man and never sell her body and she will nurse her babies like a woman and live in love like a garden... (Chapter Se… - Marge Piercy

(about putting time into trying to look young) It is certainly a replacement for educating your mind, developing your interests, becoming closer to other people. If you spent the amount of time a week you might spend on the pursuit of a prepubescent body on learning a foreign language, on writing something meaningful to yourself and to others, on practicing piano, on changing the society-this country would be a far different place.

Poems told me there were other people who felt the way I felt. That was validation for the person I was. Poems can mean survival.

there is no justice we don't make daily
like bread and love.