Quotes by Gloria Steinem

You should write about take no-shit women like me. Girls need to know they can break the rules p.79

Sometimes I think the only real division into two is between people who divide everything into two and those who dont.

Long before all these divisions were opened between home and the road, betweens a womans place and a mans world, humans followed the crops, the seasons, traveling with their families, our companions, animals, our tents. We built campfires and moved from place to place. This way of traveling is still in our cellular memory. Living things have evolved as travelers, Even migrating birds know that nature doesnt demand a choice between nesting and flight.

Before she leaves, my new friend tells me to look out of the big picture window at the parking lot.See that purple Harley out there—that big gorgeous one? Thats mine. I used to ride behind my husband, and never took the road on my own. Then after the kids were grown, I put my foot down. It was hard, but we finally got to be partners. Now he says he likes it better this way. He doesnt have to worry about his bike breaking down or getting a heart attach and totaling us both. I even put Ms. on my license plate—and you should see my grandkids faces when Grandma rides up on her purple Harley!On my own again, I look out at the barren sand and tortured rocks of the Badlands, stretching for miles. Ive walked there, and I know that, close up, the barren sand reveals layers of pale rose and beige and cream, and the rocks turn out to have intricate womblike openings. Even in the distant cliffs, caves of rescue appear.What seems to be one thing from a distance is very different close up.I tell you this story because its the kind of lesson that can be learned only on the road. And also because Ive come to believe that, inside, each of us has a purple motorcycle.We have only to discover it—and ride.

Dying seems less sad than having lived too little.

I myself cried when I got angry, then became unable to explain why I was angry in the first place. Later I would discover this was endemic among female human beings. Anger is supposed to be unfeminine so we suppress it -until it overflows. I could see that not speaking up made my mother feel worse. This was my first hint of the truism that depression is anger turned inward; thus women are twice as likely to be depressed.

In Indian Country,” he says, “we have a different sense of time. I’m learning and you’re learning—and more will.

In our weeks of talk, movies and friendship, I watched as Wilma turned a medical ordeal into one more event in her life, but not its definition. I believe she was teaching me an intimate form of The Way. In her words: Every day is a good day - because we are part of everything alive.

Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities.

I can go on the road - because I can come home. I come home - because Im free to leave. Each way of being is more valued in the presence of the other. This balance between making camp and following the seasons is both very ancient and very new. We all need both.

I can go on the road - and I can come home. I come home - because Im free to leave. Each way of being is more valued int he presence of the other. This balance between making camp and following the seasons is both very ancient and very new. We all need both.

I like to believe that the road is sharpening my mind and lengthening my life with surprise.

A journey - whether its to the corner grocery or through life - is supposed to have a beginning, middle, and end, right? Well, the road is not like that at all. Its the very illogic and the juxtaposed differences of the road - combined with our search for meaning - that make travel so addictive.

I could leave—because I could return. I could return—because I knew adventure lay just beyond an open door. Instead of either/or, I discovered a whole world of and.

Each way of being is more valued in the presence of the other. This balance between making camp and following the seasons is both very ancient and very new. We all need both.

Even migrating birds know that nature doesnt demand a choice between nesting and flight.

Altogether, I cant imagine technology replacing bookstores completely, any more than movies about a country replace going there.

hate generalizes, love specifies

Our grief is not a cry for war.Thats how New Yorkers feel, the driver said. They know what bombing looks like, and they know the hell it is. But outside New York, people will feel guilty because they werent here. Theyll be yelling for revenge out of guilt and ignorance. Sure, we all want to catch the criminals, but only people who werent in New York will want to bomb another country and repeat what happened here.

It still would be years before I understood the seriousness of my change of view. Much later, I recognized it in Revolution, the essay of Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski, who describes the moment when a man on the edge of a crowd looks back defiantly at a policeman — and when that policeman senses a sudden refusal to accept his defining gaze — as the imperceptible moment in which rebellion is born. All books about all revolutions begin with a chapter that describes the decay of tottering authority or the misery and sufferings of the people, Kapuscinski writes. They should begin with a psychological chapter — one that shows how a harassed, terrified man suddenly breaks his terror, stops being afraid. This unusual process — sometimes accomplished in an instant, like a shock — demands to be illustrated. Man gets rid of fear and feel free. Without that, there would be no revolution.