Nervous Conditions

"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."

"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"

"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 can't go on all the time being whatever’s necessary. You've got to have some conviction, and I’m convinced I don't want to be anyone’s underdog"

"You can't go on all the time being whatever's necessary. You've got to have some conviction, and I'm convinced I don't want to be anyone's underdog. It's not right for anyone to be that. But once you get used to it, well, it just seems natural and you just carry on. And that's the end of you. You're trapped"

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

"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"

"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"