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What I Would Argue Is That Real Spirituality Is The Ability To Keep Encountering Two Opposite Thoughts At The Same Time And Still Maintain Some Kind Of Morality And Perspective In The World. It Is Not The Elimination Of One Side Of The Equation Or The Elimination Of What You Don't Like; It Is The Investigation Of Everything.

-Eve Ensler

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What I Would Argue

Eve Ensler

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What I Would Argue Is That Real Spirituality Is The Ability To Keep Encountering Two Opposite Thoughts At The Same Time And Still Maintain Some Kind Of Morality And Perspective In The World. It Is Not The Elimination Of One Side Of The Equation Or The Elimination Of What You Don't Like; It Is The Investigation Of Everything.

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I Wake Up Every Day And I Think, 'i'm Breathing! It's A Good Day.'

When I Was Younger I Was Much More Polemical And Didactic, Much Less Trusting. Inherently My Own Vision Of The World Would Weave Its Way Through The Characters. Also, My Concerns Are Changing. What Happens Is You Write A Few Plays And Get Boxed Into Some Idea Of What Your Concerns Are And What You're Supposed To Be Writing About.

If You Are Divided From Your Body, Then You Are Divided From The Body Of The World.

It Seems To Me That We Spend An Inordinate Amount Of Time And Attention On Fixing Ourselves When We Could Really Be Directing That Out To Serving Others.

My Commitment Originated In My Own Story And My Own Relationship To Violence.

When You Rape, Beat, Maim, Mutilate, Burn, Bury, And Terrorize Women, You Destroy The Essential Life Energy On The Planet.

Freedom, That's The Kind Of Power I'm Interested In. When We Help Each Other Get Free, Then It's Not About Anybody Being On Top Or Anybody Being On The Bottom. It's About Being Together, In A Community.

One Of The Things I Think About When We Talk About A Violence,and Relationship To Spirituality Is That It Seems To Me When You Take Something From Someone That Isn't Yours Or You Hurt Someone Else, Fundamentally, You Actually Do That To Yourself. You Actually Unmake Yourself, You Work Against Your Own Being And Your Own Matter.

Stop Trying To Fix Your Body. It Was Never Broken.

I Think For Me, Happiness Is Crucial, But I Think We Think That Happiness Comes From Amassing Goods And Getting Things And Being Loved And Being Successful, When In Fact My Experience Of Happiness Comes When You Give Everything Away, When You Serve People, When You're Watching Something You Do Make Somebody Happy, That's When Happiness Happens.

The People Who Are On The Front Lines Every Day In Hospitals, Nurses, The People Who Are Running Clinics, The People Who Are Taking Care Of Your Children, Those Are The People Who Are The Lovers Of The World, Are The Good Of The World.

I'd Stop Calling It "chemotherapy." I'd Call It "transformational Juice." Infusion Suites Would Become "transformational Suites" Or "journey Rooms."

If You Look At Capitalism And Patriarchy, They're Both Such Hierarchical, Competitive, Oneupmanship Systems. They've Trained Us All [to Think] That Power Means Having All The Goods Or Having The Most Money Or Having The Most Attention Or Having The Most Fame. That's Not The Power That Interests Me. Actually, The Deconstruction Of That Power Is What Interests Me.

When You Listen To Other Women’s Stories, You Begin To Understand Your Own Better, And You Begin To Find Ways Back Through And With Each Other.

I Feel Passionate About Nurses. I Would Do Anything For Nurses. Anything.

Some Days I Would Get So Exhausted, Nauseous, In Pain - Just From Going Back Through Things. It's Almost As If I Had The Experience And Then The Meta-experience.

Naming Things, Breaking Through Taboos And Denial Is The Most Dangerous, Terrifying, And Crucial Work. This Has To Happen In Spite Of Political Climates Or Coercions, In Spite Of Careers Being Won Or Lost, In Spite Of The Fear Of Being Criticized, Outcast, Or Disliked. I Believe Freedom Begins With Naming Things. Humanity Is Preserved By It.

What If, Instead Of Being Afraid Of Even Talking About Death, We Saw Our Lives In Some Ways As Preparation For It. What If We Were Taught To Ponder It And Reflect On It And Talk About It And Enter It And Rehearse It And Try It On?what If, Rather Than Being Cast Out And Defined By Some Terminal Category, You Were Identified As Someone In The Middle Of A Transformation That Could Deepen Your Soul, Open Your Heart, And All The While-even If And Particularly When You Were Dying-you Would Be Supported By And Be Part Of A Community?

I Think Many Of Us Get Separated From The Mothership - Our Body - Early On. I Think The Mothership Is Also The Earth, And Life Itself. Trauma Separates Us From That And Dissociates Us From Our Hearts.

We Have No Idea How Many Women Were Raped In Wars - Because No One Ever Asked. So Sometimes When People Say Statistics Have Escalated, I Wonder If, That Is True Or Are We Just Hearing About Things Now That We Didn't Hear About Before.

We Have To Know People Who Are Outside Of Our Own Circle, We Have To Reach Out To People We Don't Know, We Have To Protect People Who Are In Tremendous Danger. And We Also Have To Not Get Burned Out And Let Our Fear And Anxiety And Depression Sink Us. So There's Lots Of Things We Have To Do Right Now!

It [the Memoir "in The Body Of The World"] Wrote Me. I Joke About It, But This Book Was So Unusual. It Just Started To Come Out. I Really Feel Like It Came Straight From My Body. I Think It Was Both An Expression Of What I Had Gone Through, But Also It Just Felt Like Everything Had Come Together In My Body And It Needed To Tell That Story.

Stop Fixing Your Bodies And Start Fixing The World!

One Of The Most Radical Things Women Can Do Is To Love Their Body.

Cherish Your Solitude. Take Trains By Yourself To Places You Have Never Been. Sleep Out Alone Under The Stars.

Women Are The Primary Resource Of The Planet. They Give Birth, We Come From Them. They Are Mothers, They Are Visionaries, They Are The Future. If We Can Figure Out How To Make Women Feel Safe And Honor Women, It Would Be Parallel Or Equal To Honoring Life Itself.

Between The Combination Of Judeo-christian Religious 'be Good Be Good Be Good' And Capitalist 'something's Wrong With You, Buy This' And The Parental Upbringing, Which Is 'you're Wrong, You're Not Thin Enough, You're Not Smart Enough' I Mean, Hello! We Don't Have A Shot.

I Think Of The Security Of Cages. How Violence, Cruelty, Oppression, Become A Kind Of Home, A Familiar Pattern, A Cage, In Which We Know How To Operate And Define Ourselves.

Terence Mckenna Says, "the Culture Is Not Your Friend." I Am Not Sure We Can Change This Culture. But I Think We Can Rise Above It And Create A New World. That's Why I So Deeply Believe In Alternative Spaces. That's Why I Believe In The Power Of Art And Activism.

I Think There Are So Many Children Being Brought Up In Some Form Of Violence, Be It Violence Of Poverty Or Sexism Or Racism Or Homophobia Or Transphobia. That Violence Takes A Life To Transform Or Overcome. I Don't Think People Should Be Spending Their Lives Dealing With That. I Think People Should Be Thriving, Playing, Creating, Evolving.

There Is A Global Epidemic Where One Out Of Three Women Will Be Beaten Or Sexually Assaulted In Their Lifetimes? How Are We Going To Build A Future Of Love And Connection? And Why Would This Not Be Of Utmost Concern To Men?

Today The United States Has The Highest Prison Population In The World, Over 2.1 Million People. ... We Lock People Up At A Rate That Is Seven To Ten Times That Of Any Other Democracy.

Prison Population

People Need To Dance. I'd Say Dance At Least Twice A Day. That's How To Get Your Energy Up And How You Keep You Revolutionary Spirit Going. It's Emma Goldman Who Said, "any Revolution Where I Can't Dance Is Not My Revolution." I Think That's The Revolution We Want.

When You Bring Consciousness To Anything, Things Begin To Shift.

The Clitoris Is Pure In Purpose. It Is The Only Organ In The Body Designed Purely For Pleasure.

Dancing In Public Spaces And Moving Your Body Freely In A Public Space Is Reclaiming What Was Taken From You When You Were Violated. The Energy Of That - You Can't Capture It, You Can't Own It. Capitalists Can't Buy It.it Can't Be Sold. It Can't Be Monetized. And That's Why I Think It's So Powerful.

I Began To See My Body Like An Ipad Or A Car. I Would Drive It And Demand Things From It. It Had No Limits. It Was Invincible. It Was To Be Conquered And Mastered Like The Earth Herself.

The Cancer In Me Became An Awareness Of The Cancer That Is Everywhere. The Cancer Of Cruelty, The Cancer Of Carelessness, The Cancer Of Greed.

We're Always Learning. We're All In The Process Of Decolonizing Ourselves - Removing All The Parts Of Us That Are Sexist, Homophobic, Transphobic, Racist. I Mean, Everybody In Society Needs To Be In This Process Because Everybody's Been Brought Up In A Misogynist, Racist, Homophobic, Transphobic Culture.

Political Change And Academic Change And Intellectual Change Are Obviously Crucial, But They Don't Necessarily Change Society. They Can Change A Particular Class And Give Everybody In That Class Great Arguments, But That Doesn't Necessarily Translate Into The Body Of The Culture.

Why Aren't We Looking At The Causes Of Breast Cancer? Why Aren't We Spending Our Energy On Looking At What We're Doing To The Earth? On The Pollutants We're Putting Into The Earth? And The Pesticides We're Putting Into The Earth? What We're Releasing Into The Air? Instead, We Just Cut Off More Organs! That's Where Metaphor Comes Into It - Not Even Metaphor As Much As Reality.

People Are Sad. People Are Broke. People Are Worried About Money, People Are Worried That They're Not Enough And Not Amounting To Anything And They Don't Feel Good About Themselves. People Have Rough Times, And Everybody's Pretending It's Not True, And We Need To Break That Veneer.

I Think That Anytime You Get Clear About What Your Mission Is Or What Your Focus Wants To Be, Things Start To Come Together In Your Life.

I Really Believe That Is Helping People. I've Been Talking To Oncologists About How We Can Re-frame And Re-think The Chemo Process, So It Becomes A Much More Spiritual, Psychological Journey. Where People Really Could Burn Away What Needs To Be Burned Away. It's Happening Anyway. Why Not Frame It In A Psychological Way Where It Can Serve As A Transformation?

We Can't Walk Where We Want To Walk Or Be Who We Want To Be Or Dress The Way We Want To Dress Or Go Anywhere Any Time Of Day. I Am Talking About The Freedom That Comes With Just Knowing That You're Okay, And That You Have Value And You Have Identity, And You Don't Have To Keep Proving Yourself.

We Have To Bridge And Join Our Struggles And Understand How We Can't Fight Violence Against Women Without Looking At Racism, We Can't Fight Violence Against Women Without Looking At Economic Deprivation Or Climate Change. All These Struggles Are Interconnected.

But My Body Was Telling Its Story. I Have Read A Lot Of Stuff About Cancer. I Needed This Book. I Wish I'd Had This Book When I Had Cancer. I Wanted Someone To Be Talking To Me About "fart Floors." I Wanted Somebody Telling Me What It Was Like To Have A Colostomy Bag. I Felt So Alone. And If You're A Person Who's Been Traumatized By Past Abuse, It's So Potentially Re-traumatizing. You Slip Right Into "oh My God, This Is The Only Person This Has Happened To Before" Mentality: "i'm Especially Bad And I Have Especially Bad Cancer..."

My Relationship To The Desecration Of The Earth Was Very Theoretical And Intellectual Until I Got Sick. I Could Never Watch Anything About Polar Bears Dying Or The Death Of Bees. There Were Certain Things I Knew I Couldn't Go Near Because They Were Too Devastating. But I Don't Think Until I Got Cancer Did I Get It In My Body, What Was Happening To The Earth. I Finally Went: "oh! Earth! Organism!"

I Think We Have To Get Bolder. Why After Fukushima Didn't We All Go Out And Shut Down All The Nuclear Power Plants And Stay There Until It Happened?

Security Isn't What I Hunger For. I Hunger For Change. I Hunger For Connection.

Cancer Was The Most Terrifying, Arduous, Painful Thing, But It Was Also A Profound Gift In The Sense That I Was Holding So Much In My Body For So Many Years That Was Dark And Terrifying Which Was Preventing My Coming Back Into Myself.

...to Speak Of Them Out Loud, To Speak Of Their Hunger And Pain And Loneliness And Humour, To Make Them Visible So That Can Not Be Ravaged In The Dark Without Great Consequence.

In The United States, The Last Recorded Clitoridectomy For Curing Masturbation Was Performed In 1948--on A Five Year Old Girl.

Real Security Is Contemplating Death, Not Pretending It Doesn't Exist.

The Mechanism Of Violence Is What Destroys Women, Controls Women, Diminishes Women And Keeps Women In Their So-called Place.

If The Theatre Has Taught Me Anything, It's That When Things Change In The Body, In The Body Politic, In The Body Of The World, In The Body Of The Earth, In The Body Of The Person, There's Change. You Never Go Back.

If You Just Look At The Fact That A Woman Was Central In Twittering The Cairo Revolution, And Women Were Central To The Tunisian Uprising. Women Are At The Center Of Everything Right Now And Moving Everything Forward. And I Do Think In The Next Year Or Two, We Are Going To See Such A Woman Spring, Such A Rising.

Trauma Dissociates Us From The Parts Of Our Body That Are Wounded, So We Have To Leave Our Whole Body. It's A Journey You Take Your Whole Life, That Coming Back In, Re-landing In Your Body, In Your Self, On The Earth. I Think One Of The Reasons It's Been So Easy, In A Way, For Us To Violate Both Women And The Earth Is This Profound Dissociation That Exists In Everyone.

You Will Touch This Joy And You Will Suddenly Know It Is What You Were Looking For Your Whole Life, But You Were Afraid To Even Acknowledge The Absence Because The Hunger For It Was So Encompassing.

I Think We Are Seeing The Absolute And Utter Collapse Of Male Politicians In This [u.s] Country And We're Seeing What The Underpinnings Of The Power Structure Are, Which Are Sexist Underpinnings.

Danger Lurks When People Are Dissociated And Detached From Their Own Story Or Feelings.

I Think So Much Of My Early Life, Even Though I Grew Up White And Middle Class, I Was Completely Shattered By The Horrifically Violent Atmosphere I Grew Up In. I Am A Consequence Of Violence. That Opened A Door To Many Realities That I Would Not Have Experienced Had I Not Survived What I Did.

I Have Been Struggling To Find My Way Back Into My Body My Whole Life.

What I Would Say To Young Women Is: Pay Attention To The Real. Pay Attention To What You're Really Thirsting For. What Do You Really Want? And I Think That's Much Harder To Decipher In A Culture That Has No Interest In It. What Interests Me Is, Are We Going To Wake In Time? Are Human Beings Going To Wake Up To Ourselves, To The Incredible Poverty That's On This Planet, To What We're Doing To The Earth, To What We're Doing To Women, To What We're Doing To Boys? That's What's Important.

I Think The Human Species Is Very Suicidal.

I Think When People Begin To Tell Their Stories, Everything Changes, Because Not Only Are You Legitimized In The Telling Of Your Story And Are You Found, Literally, Like You Matter, You Exist In The Telling Of Your Story, But When You Hear Your Story Be Told, You Suddenly Exist In Community And With Others.

I Would Rate The Fact That I Get To Be Alive A Big Beautiful 10. Satisfaction With Myself - Work In Progress.

Women Not Only Get Violated, But Then We Take On The Struggle To End It Too... As A Man, How Could The Destruction Of Women Be Anything To You But Devastating? Think About The Fact That The Women Being Hurt Are Your Mothers, Daughters, Sisters.

There Were Momentary Visitations. I Was A Visitor, Not An Inhabitant. I Think I Say That At The Beginning Of The Book: "i Have Made Visits To The Earth In My Body, But It's Always Been As A Visitor."

Decide Whether You Want To Be Liked Or Admired.

I Think The Greatest Illusion We Have Is That Denial Protects Us. It's Actually The Biggest Distortion And Lie. In Fact, Staying Asleep Is What's Killing Us.

There Is A Beautiful Expression In Nicaragua: "struggle Is The Highest Form Of Song". I Love That. We Are In The Struggle. It's Like A River. Once You Step Into It You Become The River. It's Not, You Go Out And Click On A Couple Of Charities That You Believe In, March In The Women's March, And You're Done. Struggle Becomes Your Life, Transforming A Paradigm That Is Based On Domination Into A Paradigm Of Co-operation. Fighting For The Liberation Of Women, Of People Of Color, Of Indigenous People, Of Lgbtq Communities. Fighting To Protect Immigrants And Assuring The Safety Of Refugees.

There Is Just So Much Excess In Terms Of The Market For Self-remodeling. I Think Most Women Are Perfectly Gorgeous And Beautiful The Way They Are.

Dancing Insists We Take Up Space, And Though It Has No Set Direction, We Go There Together. Dance Is Dangerous, Joyous, Sexual, Holy, Disruptive, And Contagious And It Breaks The Rules. It Can Happen Anywhere, At Anytime, With Anyone And Everyone, And It's Free. Dance Joins Us And Pushes Us To Go Further And That Is Why It's At The Center Of One Billion Rising.

I Finally Know The Difference Between Pleasing And Loving, Obeying And Respecting. It Has Taken Me So Many Years To Be Okay With Being Different, And With Being This Alive, This Intense.

I Think That It Was Really Rock-and-roll Stars, Women Who Were Breaking Boundaries With Their Bodies And Their Voices And Their Beings And Their Music. I Spent A Lot Of Time At Concerts,just Watching Women Rock Out. They Expressed So Much Of What I Believed Could Be Possible.

I Feel Sometimes With Boys That The Tyranny Of Patriarchy Has Had A Much More Devastating Blow On Boys Than It Has On Anyone. Because They Have Literally Been Forced To Disassociate From Their Hearts.

I Am So Grateful To Be Alive. It's Ridiculous To Be Alive.

Be Transparent As Wind, Be As Possible And Relentless And Dangerous, Be What Moves Things Forward Without Needing To Leave A Mark, Be Part Of This Collection Of Molecules That Begins Somewhere Unknown And Can't Help But Keep Rising. Rising.rising. Rising.

We're In A Crisis. We're In A Crisis Like I Don't Think America Has Ever Known In My Lifetime. But We Have To Keep Joy In Our Lives, Love In Our Lives, Poetry In Our Lives, Dancing In Our Lives.

Denial Is Really Death. People Think That When You're Connected With Other People It's More Painful. The Opposite Is True. When You're Connected To The River You Have Despair, But You Also Have Joy, And There's A Flow In The River.

I Want To Touch You In Real Time Not Find You On Youtube, I Want To Walk Next To You In The Mountains Not Friend You On Facebook.

I Believe In Fierce Love, Pushing The Edge, Calling The Robbers, The Corporates, The Elites, The Pillagers And Insanely Wealthy To Task, Going Whatever Distance We Need To Go Now To Protect Our Earth And Each Other.

I Think It Was A Realization Of This Cancer, An Understanding Of The Broader Implications Of What Cancer Is. The Greed, The Ravaging Of Lands And Seas For Profit, The Taking Of Things That Don't Belong To Us; What We've Done To The Environment In This Fast-paced, Careless Hunger. I Think All Of That Was Happening In My Body.

What Neo-capitalism Does So Brilliantly Is That It's Always Subdividing And Dividing, So That People Are Never Able To Be Joined In Their Numbers And Strength In A Unified Way. That Is Exactly What We Have To Overcome.

Dance Is Holy, Sexual, And It's A Way Of Being Very Powerful And A Little Dangerous Without Being Violent.

I Really Want To Help Stop Violence Toward Women.

The Fact That Women Have Been Moving Forward, That A Woman Was Running For President, That We Had A Black President - I Think There Was, Without A Doubt, A Whitelash And A Complete Backlash Against The Liberation Of Women, Against The Power Of People Of Color.

Good Is Towing The Line, Being Behaved, Being Quiet, Being Passive, Fitting In, Being Liked, And Great Is Being Messy, Having A Belly, Speaking Your Mind, Standing Up For What You Believe In, Fighting For Another Paradigm, Not Letting People Talk You Out Of What You Know To Be True.

Go So Far Away That You Stop Being Afraid Of Not Coming Back.

I Think About Marvin Gaye And 'sexual Healing.' What A Radical Idea That Sex Was Healing. I Learned My Politics Through That Music.

…find Freedom, Aliveness, And Power Not From What Contains, Locates, Or Protects Us, But From What Dissolves, Reveals, And Expands Us.

I Was A Young Feminist In The '70s. Feminism Saved My Life. It Gave Me A Life. But I Saw How So Much Of What People Were Saying Was Not Matching Up With What They Were Doing. For Example, We Were Talking About Sister Solidarity, And Women Were Putting Each Other Down. We Were Talking About Standing Up For Our Rights, And Women Weren't Leaving Abusive Relationships With Men. There Were Just So Many Disconnects.

I'm Feeling A Kind Of Liberty To Write About What's Interesting To Me Without Worrying About What I Should Be Writing About. And That Feels Good.

What I'm Really Interested In Is Freedom.

I Honestly Never Understood How Violence Against Women Became A Women's Issue. 95 Percent Of The Violence Men Are Doing To Women.

What Happens When Someone Throws You Against A Wall Or Tells You You're A Jackass Or Puts You Down Or Calls You Bad Names? It Goes Into Your Body. We Hold It In Our Body. If We Don't Have A Way To Let That Go And Release That, It Becomes Sickness Eventually.

We Have Not Yet Made Violence Against Women Abnormal, Extraordinary, Unacceptable. We Have Not Yet Come To See It As A Pathological Issue.

I'm In Good Shape. My Cancer Means I Have Lost A Lot Of Organs And I'm A Lot Lighter. I Have Devoted Myself To Yoga And I'm Doing Handstands.

The Love Is All Around Us. I Made A Life Of Love.

I Think We Have A Tendency In America To Keep Dividing Ourselves, Separating Ourselves From Each Other.

Each Time I Had Five Hours Of The Poison Going Into Me, I Just Pictured Everything That Needed To Be Burned Away. I Pictured Wars, I Pictured The Things My Father Had Done To Me, I Pictured Brutality, And When It Was Over, I Am Light.

I Got To A Nine-hour Surgery, I Lost Lots Of Body Parts And Rearranged, I Got Really Months Of Infection That I Lost 30 Pounds. But The Idea Of Pumping Poison Into My Bloodstream Just - I Couldn't, I Couldn't.

In America, We Have To Really Be Working On Two Fronts Right Now. Immediately, We Have To Be Rising In Resistance And Protecting Our Muslim Brothers And Sisters [and] Every Marginalized Person Under Threat And Siege. At The Same Time, We Have To Be Planning And Envisioning Where We're Going. How We Build Moments And Movements, How We Come Up With The Vision We Want Of A Progressive Left - That's What Comes In After.

I Think We Just Have To Look At All The Ways In Which We Are Violating The Earth, Each Other, Economic Violence, Racial Violence, Environmental Violence - Where We Are Dominating And Not Cooperating .

To Love Women, To Love Our Vaginas, To Know Them And Touch Them And Be Familiar With Who We Are And What We Need. To Satisfy Ourselves, To Teach Our Lovers To Satisfy Us, To Be Present In Our Vaginas, To Speak Of Them Out Loud, To Speak Of Their Hunger And Pain And Loneliness And Humor, To Make Them Visible So They Cannot Be Ravaged In The Dark Without Great Consequence, So That Our Center, Our Point, Our Motor, Our Dream, Is No Longer Detached, Mutilated, Numb, Broken, Invisible, Or Ashamed.

Rock-and-roll Was An Example Of Change In The Body Of The Culture. I Think It's Really What Helped Bring The Anti-war Movement To Its Peak And Moved People Into The Streets To Seize The Day - The Movement Was The Embodiment Of What Was Happening In The Music. This Is What Taught Me That It Was Possible To Bring Art And Activism Together. Without That Piece, That Energetic Embodiment Piece, The Rest Is Just Intellectual Construct.

Why Don't We Teach Sex The Way We Teach Math Or History? It Is Such A Deeply Crucial And Healing Part Of Life And We Offer No Road Map. I Think It Is Core To Ending Violence.

The Verb That's Been Enforced On Girls Is To Please. Girls Are Trained To Please...i Want Us All To Change The Verb. I Want The Verb To Be Educate, Or Activate, Or Engage, Or Confront, Or Defy, Or Create.

Security Is Elusive. It's Impossible. We All Die. We All Get Old. We All Get Sick. People Leave Us. People Change Us. Nothing Is Secure.

What I Believe Is That We Have This Extraordinary Spirit Inside Ourselves, Which For Me Is Our Buddha Nature. I Believe We Are In The Process Of Opening And Getting Closer And Closer To Our Buddha Nature And Stripping Away All That Is Covering It. I Don't Think I'm Going To End Up Meeting This One Being Up There Or Out There.

What I Have Found Is That Even When You Try To Transform Existing Structures They Are So Powerful They Often Overwhelm, Seduce, And Control You.

I Think Culture Is Where Things Change In Us Deeply. But Right Now, I Think That People Are Very Traumatised. They Are Very Scared. Having Grown Up In A House With A Perpetrator Who Was Violent Every Day And Terrorising Every Day, I Feel Like That This Country Is Suddenly Very Much Like The House And The Family I Grew Up In. Every Day We Are Glued To Our Phones, Glued To Our Television; "what Is This Psychopath Going To Do Next? How Will He Embarrass Us? Who Will He Bully Or Hurt Or Humiliate Today? It's So Easy To Get Locked Into A Syndrome Where The Perpetrator Is Ruling Your Life.

I'm A Nomad. I Have A Place In New York In The Flatiron District, And I Have A Place In Paris In Ile Saint-louis, And I Spend A Lot Of Time In Congo.

It Is Almost A Guarantee That In The Pursuit Of Security You Will Become More Insecure. Inherent In The Quest For Security Is Its Undoing.

Guarantees That

Then There Was Sex, Which, For Me, Was Such A Need. When I Was Younger, I Had A Need To Have Sex With Everyone. I Don't Know Where That Was Coming From, But There Was Such A Need To Connect Physically - Obviously, For Me To Connect Physically To Myself. There Were Times, Like I Say In The Book, Where You Lay On Top Of Me, When You Push Me Down, When You're Inside Me.

Money Doesn't Make You Special, It Makes You Lucky. Be Generous, Be Crazy, Be Outrageous.

It Seems To Me There's This Tyranny That's Not Accidental Or Incidental, To Make Women Feel Compelled To Look Like Somebody They're Not. I Think The Effort Is Being Made To Get Us To Turn Our Time And Attention To This Instead Of Important Political Issues.

Writing And Giving Voice To What I Am Feeling Makes Me Happy. And Supporting People In Finding Their Voice, Passion, Outrage And Resistance. There Is Nothing Better Than That.

In America, We Have A Government That Is Now Run By White Nationalists, By Billionaires, By Incredible Misogynists.

I Believe In Irony. And If V-day Has Taught Me Anything, It's That If You Go Out With Artistic, Outrageous Irony And Humor, People Are Drawn To It.

You Have To Give To The World The Thing That You Want The Most, In Order To Fix The Broken Parts Inside You.

Maybe Being Good Isn't About Getting Rid Of Anything. Maybe Being Good Has To Do With Living In The Mess In The Frailty In The Failures In The Flaws. Maybe What I Tried To Get Rid Of Is The Goodest Part Of Me. Think Passion. Think Age. Think Round. Maybe Good Is About Developing The Capacity To Live Fully Inside Everything. Our Body Is Our Country, The Only City, The Only Village, The Only Every We Will Ever Know.

Three Of The Ten Principles Governing The City Of Joy Are (a) Tell The Truth, (b) Stop Waiting To Be Rescued, And (c) Give Away What You Want The Most.

With The Gulf Spill, I Absolutely Merged In The Time When I Had That Infection. I Couldn't Get Out Of The Gulf Spill. There Were So Many Similarities: The Drains And The Siphoning And The Tubes. And Also In The Way The Earth Was Hurt, The Ocean Was Bleeding. Remember The Video Cams Of The Oil Gushing? I Couldn't Stop Watching That.

Unless Men Are Active Allies, We'll Never End Violence Against Women And Girls.

I Literally Would Go To See Tina Turner Any Opportunity I Had Because Being In The Presence Of Tina Turner Was Like Being In The Presence Of Transformative Energy, And Feminist Transformative Energy. I Remember Thinking To Myself, Whatever This Is, It's Revolution. Whatever This Is, It's Change Embodied In A Woman.

I Think The World Is Always Improving And Always Not Improving. I Think That Both Are Simultaneously Happening All The Time. I Don't Think It's One Motion Unfortunately - I Wish We Could Say It's Better, Better, Better - But I Think It's Better, Bad, Better, Bad - You Know?

I Think The Thing That Has Always Made Me Happy Is Being In The Struggle, In A Community Of Struggle With Other People.

What I Feel Now Is Connected To People. I Feel Connected And I Feel A Lot Of Love For People. I Feel The Possibility Of What Building Social Movements And What Working Together In Struggle Creates. Whatever That Energy Is, It Feels A Lot Better Than What I Felt When I Was Younger - Which Was Worthless And Disconnected And Isolated And Alone.

Working Together

I Think We Need To Teach Pleasure. What Beautiful Touch Means. What Reciprocity Means. What Being Connected And What Intimacy Means. Boys Get Out There At A Young Age And The Performance Posturing Is So Great And Ends Up Being Hard And Aggressive.

Geography Does Not Define You - Love Does.

Geography Teachers

An Activist Is Someone Who Cannot Help But Fight For Something. That Person Is Not Usually Motivated By A Need For Power Or Money Or Fame, But In Fact Is Driven Slightly Mad By Some Injustice, Some Cruelty, Some Unfairness, So Much So That He Or She Is Compelled By Some Internal Moral Engine To Act To Make It Better.

I Think What's Been True Across The Board Is The Universal Patriarchy, The Fear Of Women Ever Being Born Back Into Complete Sexuality And Life-force. This Manifests Itself In Different Cultural Variances, But That's Really What's Going On Everywhere.

There Are Three Billion Women In The World Who Have Vaginas. I Don't Think We Can Stop Fighting For Our Sexual Liberation, For Our Right To Control Our Bodies. But At The Same Time As We're Doing That, We Have To Also Be Fighting For The Rights Of Trans Women And Standing Up For Them And Making Sure That We're Always Providing Platforms For Them And Listening To Their Concerns In Solidarity.

Do You Say That Tree Isn't Pretty Cause It Doesn't Look Like That Tree? We're All Trees. You're A Tree. I'm A Tree. You've Got To Love Your Body, Eve. You've Got To Love Your Tree. Love Your Tree. (leah)

I Despise Charity. It Gives Crumbs To A Few And Silences The Others.

Cherish Your Solitude. Take Trains By Yourself To Places You Have Never Been. Sleep Out Alone Under The Stars. Learn How To Drive A Stick Shift. Go So Far Away That You Stop Being Afraid Of Not Coming Back. Say No When You Don’t Want To Do Something. Say Yes If Your Instincts Are Strong, Even If Everyone Around You Disagrees. Decide Whether You Want To Be Liked Or Admired. Decide If Fitting In Is More Important Than Finding Out What You’re Doing Here. Believe In Kissing.

Since Cancer, I Feel Like I Have Dreams Rather Than Ambitions, Visions Rather Than Plans.

Why Don't We Bring Everyone Up To Be Caring And Compassionate, To Believe That We Are Connected With Everyone And Everything Around Us?

I Am Not Saying People Shouldn't Be Held Accountable For Terrible Acts. But Holding People In Prisons Does Not Necessarily Make Them Responsible Or Accountable. It Makes Them Bad. It Makes Them Evil. It Puts An End To Any Process Of Transformation. It Hardens Them Spiritually And Psychologically.

I Bet You're Worried. I Was Worried. I Was Worried About Vaginas. I Was Worried About What We Think About Vaginas, And Even More Worried That We Don't Think About Them.

I Want To Read So I Can Read The Koran Read The Signs In The Street Know The Number Of The Bus I'm Supposed To Take When I One Day Leave This House.

Wouldn't It Be Incredible If Everyone Could Be Purged, Somehow, Of The Projected Not-them Badness That They Internalized And Perhaps Have Acted Out Because Their Souls Have Been So Damaged? Wouldn't It Be Incredible If Everyone Could Find The Joy That Comes With Committing To Our Own Goodness? Perhaps We Would Stop Dividing Ourselves Into Malignancies Of Various Forms.

For Me, So Much Of My Life Has Been This Attempt To Find My Way Back Into My Body. I Tried Various Forms, From Promiscuity, To Eating Disorders, To Performance Art. And I Think It Wasn't Until I Got Cancer, Where I Was Suddenly Being Pricked And Ported And Chemoed And Operated On, That I Suddenly Just Became Body. I Was Just A Body. And It Was In That, In That Finally Landing In Myself That I Really Discovered The World In My Body.

People Are More Afraid To Love Than They Are To Kill.

When I Was Younger I Felt Very Disempowered, Very Disappeared. I Felt Worthless, Like I Had No Right To Exist. I Think A Good Part Of My Life Was Spent Recovering From That. Pulling Myself Out Of That.

Everything You Deny Is Actually Killing You On Some Level. You See Something, You Feel Something Wrong With Your Body, You Pretend It's Not Happening, It Goes On, It Grows, It Gets Worse.

Look, You Do Everything In Stages, Right? I Don't Think Everything Happens At Once. There Are So Many Layers We Are Constantly Chipping Away At, Down And Down And Down, Closer And Closer To What Would Be The Body. I Think What Happened With Cancer, Was That I Woke Up Out Of Nine Hours Of Surgery And I Was Body. I Was Just Body.

I Really Do Think How We Frame Things Determines So Much Of Our Experience, And I've Been Talking To A Lot Of Oncologists, Like, Why Don't We Call Them Transformation Suites And Give People Transformation Juice And Have Guides That Support People When They're Going Through Chemo So You Could Actually Burn Away What Needs To Be Burned Away, As Opposed To This Dread, Terror, Horror, Which Is A Very Different Experience.

Different Experiences

I Think All My Work's Been About How Do Women Get Back Into Our Bodies; How Do Men Get Back. We're All Disassociated.

We Get Off Track. Capitalism Takes Us Off Track. You Get Off The "real" And Get On The "wheel." The "wheel" Becomes The Winning And Losing, The Succeeding And Failing, The "i Will Achieve." All That Stuff Becomes So Preoccupying, Particularly If You're Born With Low Self-esteem, Or No Sense Of Yourself, Or Even If You're Just Born In The Consumer Culture. It's Very Powerful.

For Many Years Now, I Feel Like My Own Body Struggle Has Been Linked And Connected With Women I Meet In The World. I Think We're In This Together.

Once You Are Diagnosed With Cancer, Time Changes. It Both Speeds Up Insanely And Stops Altogether.

What We All Have To Know Is The Struggle Is Long. It's Long. It May Not End In Our Lifetimes. But The Struggle Is What Gives Our Lives Meaning And Purpose. I Tell People To Take Time Out Of Activism Every Day To Take Care Of Their Bodies, To Take Care Of Their Souls And Spirits.

I Am Worried About This Word, This Notion - Security. I See This Word, Hear This Word, Feel This Word Everywhere. Security Check. Security Watch. Security Clearance. Why Has All This Focus On Security Made Me Feel So Much More Insecure? ... Why Are We Suddenly A Nation And A People Who Strive For Security Above All Else?

When I Wrote 'the Good Body,' I Turned 40 And Suddenly Had This Stomach. It Seemed Like The End Of The World. Because I Didn't Value My Body. I Was Constantly Judging It, But I Also Didn't Live In It.

End Of The World

Looking At It, I Started Crying. Maybe It Was Knowing That I Had To Give Up The Fantasy, The Enormous Life Consuming Fantasy , That Someone Or Something Was Going To Do This For Me – The Fantasy That Someone Was Coming To Lead My Life, To Choose Direction, To Give Me Orgasms.

I Don't Get Tired, Because Every Time A Woman Doesn't Die Or Doesn't Get Beaten Or Doesn't Get Raped Or Doesn't Get Honor-killed Or Doesn't Get Acid-burned, It's A Huge Victory.

There's An Underlying Puritanicalness In America That Is Not That Different To The Prudishness Of Britain - It Just Manifests Itself In Different Ways.

You Have Visits, Then You Have Disappearances. You Enter, Then You Exit. You Come, You Go. It Would Be So Great If You Could Just Get To Human Enlightenment On A Linear Path.

The World Has Done That Already - Possessed The Congo And Pillaged Her And Dominated Her And Robbed Her Of Agency And Occupation. Love Is Something Else, Something Rising And Contagious And Surprising. It Isn't Aware Of Itself. It Isn't Keeping Track. It Isn't Something You Sign For. It's Endless And Generous And Enveloping. It's In The Drums, In The Voices, In The Bodies Of The Wounded Made Suddenly Whole, By The Music, By Each Other, Dancing.

The Minute Someone Tells You You Have Cancer, It's Kind Of Like You Die. You Really Do Die. It's Like You Get That You're Mortal.

If You Are Connected To Your Own Internal Being, It Is Very Hard To Be Screwing And Destroying And Hurting Another Human Being, Because You’ll Be Feeling What They’re Feeling. If You’re Separated, It’s Not A Hard Thing To Do At All.

Give Voice To What You Know To Be True, And Do Not Be Afraid Of Being Disliked Or Exiled. I Think That's The Hard Work Of Standing Up For What You See.

This Artistic Uprising We Had The Other Night In Washington Square Park: There Was Poetry, There Was Dance, There Was Song, There Was Spoken Word; And People Left Feeling So Inspired And So Energised. We Have To Get Ourselves Out Of This Syndrome Of Trauma And Being Re-traumatised. Art Releases This Energy. It Exposes Us To Wonder Again, And Magic Again, And Ambiguity - All The Things We Need To Really Keep Going And Fighting And Resisting In These Times.

Theater Has An Incredible Capacity To Move People To Social Change, To Address Issues, To Inspire Social Revolution.

I Think To Be Honest, That Being Is Inside. I Meet That Being In So Many People That I Meet Everywhere In The World And When I Do Meet That Being, In Other People, What I Want To Ask Is "how Do We Keep Opening Ourselves So That We Can Become As Vulnerable And As Willing To Live In The Deepest Complexity And Ambiguity And Truth That We Can?

I Have Been A Depressed Person Most Of M Life. I Was Always In The Throes Of Self-hatred.

Depressed Person

What Happened With Cancer Was That I Just Became A Body. There Was Nothing Else But Body For A Month. I Was Chemo'd And Operated On And Cut And Poked. At First It Was Really Horrifying And Scary, And Then It Was Just,wow. You're In Your Body. This Is Body!

We Must Stop Being Polite And Behaved And Find New Inventive Tactics To Shift The Paradigm. We Are The Majority.

To Have Insurance And Have A Diagnosis And To Have Doctors, I Just Felt It Would Be Immoral On Some Level To Complain.

I Think To Be Cut Off From Your Heart Is The Greatest Tyranny In The World.

We Live In A Racist World. Everywhere There Is Racism. We Say To White People, "you Really Have To Examine How You Behave In The World. You Are Responsible For Deconstructing Internalized Racism And Being Part Of A Ongoing Process Of Decolonizing Yourself.

I Can Only Describe It As: The Whole Experience Was Imprinted On My Body. And When I Started To Write It, It Just Came From Such A Very, In The Body Of The Worldvery Physical... It Just Came From My Body. I Don't Know How To Explain It Better Than That. I Guess My Head Was Transmitting It. It Was A Very, Very Physical Experience Writing This Book.

It Really Occurred To Me At A Certain Point: Women Have Not Been Embodied. Feminism Has Not Been Embodied. It Hasn't Gotten Into Us In A Way Where It Is So Undeniable That There Is Nothing To Prove. Do You Know What I Mean? That We Are So In Our Feminist Skin, So To Speak, That We Are That World Now.

I Think Being An Activist And An Artist Is An Interesting Contradiction, Because So Often They Are At Odds With One Another. When You Write As An Artist You Have To Clean The Palate Of Your Own Politics In Creating Characters And Activism Is Kind Of The Exact Opposite.

I Think Violence Against Women In America Has Become Ordinary - It's Been Made Absolutely Acceptable.

If You Were Around In The '60s, You Already Know That Music And Art And Love Are A Critical Part Of The Revolution. This Is How We Fight.

When We Give In The World What We Want The Most, We Heal The Broken Part Inside Each Of Us.

I Came Out Of The Nine-hour Surgery And I Had Tubes In Every Direction, And Those Nurses At The Mayo Clinic, I Could Cry For Four Days At The Kindness Of Those Nurses. The Care, The Detail Of The Care, The Attention That Just Never Wavered, Never Complained. The Love.

I Think What All Of Us Have In Common Is That We've Been Taught And Trained And Programmed To Focus On Fixing And Mutilating Ourselves. That's A Core Reason Why Women Do Not Have Power In The World.

You Know I Think So Many Of Us Live Outside Our Bodies. My Dream Is That People Will Find A Way Back Home, Into Their Bodies, To Connect With The Earth, To Connect With Each Other, To Connect With The Poor, To Connect With The Broken, To Connect With The Needy, To Connect With People Calling Out All Around Us, To Connect With The Beauty, Poetry, The Wildness.

Dance Has A Transformative Effect On Bodily Trauma.

I Think So Much Of Neoliberalism And Capitalism Has Caused People To Live In A State Of Greed, Fear And Consumption That Is Covering Up So Much Of What We Really Want.

Our Bodies Are Critical. If I Learned Anything From Getting Really Bad Cancer Seven Years Ago, It's That Your Body Is What You've Got. If You Don't Take Care Of It, You're Not Going To Be Here.

Why Are Women Immobile? Because So Many Feel Like They’re Waiting For Someone To Say, "you’re Good, You’re Pretty, I Give You Permission."

What I Would Argue Is That Real Spirituality Is The Ability To Keep Encountering Two Opposite Thoughts At The Same Time And Still Maintain Some Kind Of Morality And Perspective In The World. It Is Not The Elimination Of One Side Of The Equation Or The Elimination Of What You Don't Like; It Is The Investigation Of Everything.

The Devastation Of Neoliberalism Is So Multi-fold, Whether It's Violence Against Women Or Desperate Economic Inequality Or The Destruction Of The Planet.

Economic Inequality

The Only Point Of Having Power It Seems To Me Is To Empower Others. The Only Point Of Leadership Is To Inspire.

People Didn't Feel So Much Shame Around It And That They Didn't Feel So Much Humiliation Around It. And The Other Thing That People Have Given Me A Lot Of Feedback About - Something I'm Very Excited About - Is All The Stuff Around Chemo As An "empathetic Warrior."

Success Itself Doesn't Give You Happiness. It's What You Do With Your Success That Gives You Happiness.

If I Had A Dream It Would Be To Think, What Would It Be Like For Everybody To Have The Kind Of Health Care I Had? What Would That Feel Like? How Would That Be, To Live In That World? Because I'll Tell You, To Be Really, Really Sick, And To Not Have Money. That Is Terrifying. And In My Opinion, A Travesty.

If You Listen To The Real In You, That Part That's Pulsing And Has Questions And Is Trying To Figure Something Out, It Will Shape Your Life In A Way Where, When You Get To Be Sixty, You'll Succeed. You'll Be Happy About Your Life.

I Think One Of The Problems With The Capitalist Mainstream Is This: No Matter What You Create To Respond Or Resist It They Will Buy It.

Anorexia Was My Attempt To Have Control Over My Body And Manipulate My Body And Starve My Body And Shape My Body. It Was Not A Very Good Relationship. It Was The Sort Of Relationship My Father Had To My Body. It Was A Tyrannical, "you'll Do What I Tell You" Relationship.

Good Relationship

Well, The Tyranny Of Masculinity And The Tyranny Of Patriarchy I Think Has Been Much More Deadly To Men Than It Has To Women. It Hasn’t Killed Our Hearts. It’s Killed Men’s Hearts. It’s Silenced Them, It’s Cut Them Off.

I Live With That Contradiction Daily. It Is A Constant Struggle. I Struggle Very Deeply. I Don't Think I've Said This To Anyone, But I've Wondered If I Just Want To Give Up This World And Live In The Congo And Just Be There. But I Don't Think That's What They Need From Me.

I Feel Very Passionate That We Need Cat Scanners In Every Country In The World. There's Not A Cat Scanner In All Of Eastern Congo. People Don't Use The Word "cancer" Because They Don't Get Diagnosed. They Just Die.

I Think We Have Made Progress. There's No Doubt About It, We Have Moved Forward. But There's Some Essential, Core Thing That Has Not Been Deconstructed. And I'm Telling You, It's Connected To The Body. I Know It Is.

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