Nervous Conditions

"Can you cook books and feed them to your husband? Stay at home with your mother. Learn to cook and clean. Grow vegetables"

"Everything about her spoke of alternatives and possibilities that if considered too deeply would wreak havoc with the neat plan I had laid out for my life"

"You cant go on all the time being whatever’s necessary. Youve got to have some conviction, and I’m convinced I dont want to be anyone’s underdog"

"And these days it is worse, with the poverty of blackness on one side and the weight of womanhood on the other. Aiwa! What will help you, my child, is to learn to carry your burdens with strength"

"It’s bad enough . . . when a country gets colonized, but when the people do as well! That’s the end, really, that’s the end"

"Quietly, unobtrusively and extremely fitfully, something in my mind began to assert itself, to question things and refuse to be brainwashed, bringing me to this time when I can set down this story. It was a long and painful process for me, that process of expansion"

"You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your perception...you see what is, where most people see what they expect."