"There's too little pleasant in this nasty dying world. We all need to remember how to play, how to be children together for a little while." (Gadi, … - Marge Piercy

If only I could tell each of them how much more fully I could love them now. I could give them, not the dutiful, selfish and perfunctory love of an adolescent, but an understanding love that would lighten their terrible burdens. (p253)

I would like it if those who were active at the time I am writing about find in Vida something that brings back the excitement, the fear, the hope of that era. I would be pleased if those too young to have lived through those times might find something of value in our struggles, might learn from our successes and our failures and be inspired to imagine a movement that might again try to change the structure and direction of our country into a more humane, just and equal society.

She felt as if she were seventeen again, ignorant, fearful, a creature all gusty emotions and pain. (eight: HOW SHALL I ADDRESS YOU?)