"Utopia is born of the hunger for something better, but it relies on hope as the engine for imagining such a future. I wanted to take what I considered the most fruitful ideas of the various movements for social change and make them vivid and concrete – that was the real genesis of Woman on the Edge of Time."

"When I was a child, I first noticed that neither history as I was taught it, nor the stories I was told, seemed to lead to me. I began to fix them. I have been at it ever since. We need a past that leads to us. Similarly, what we imagine we are working toward does a lot to define what we will consider doable action aimed at producing the future we want and preventing the future we fear."

"Feminist utopias were created out of a hunger for what we didn’t have, at a time when change felt not only possible but probable. Utopias came from the desire to imagine a better society when we dared to do so."

"The point of creating futures is to get people to imagine what they want and don’t want to happen down the road – and maybe do something about it."

"Beth was looking in the mirror of her mother's vanity. The mirror had wings that opened and shut. When she was little she used to like to pull them together around her into a cave of mirrors with only a slit of light. It isn't me, isn't me. Well, who else would it be, stupid? Isn't anyone except Bride: a dress wearing a girl."

"Drifting with things is a habit it takes almost dying to break."

"No, thanks." Vida placed her hand over the top of the tulip-shaped wineglass. "No more for me. Thank you." "This is a good Vouvray. Louis in the wine store recommended it" Hank tried to nudge her hand aside with the cold dripping base of the bottle. "It's lovely. I've just had enough." She made herself smile. It felt like a date, a bad date. She had to keep smiling across the debris of the dinner for two. "The chicken was wonderful!"

"Doorways are sacred to women for we are the doorways of life and we must choose what comes in and what goes out."

"Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen: reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in."

"Like many women, Daria both loved her mother and prayed not to become her. Often Daria felt helpless before her mother Nina's woes, yet her first impulse was to reassure herself: I am different. I have a good and faithful husband, I have my own work, I live in a beautiful house, I like my life. Misery was not hereditary or contagious. Since the plane had taken off late from Chicago, Daria had been dividing her time between worrying about her younger daughter Tracy, who had gone away to college for the first time, and Nina, who had sounded more depressed and lonely than usual on the phone last night. Was Nina really sick? Or just unhappy?"

"Like species, couples die out or evolve."

"Good work in a field breeds interest and makes room for more good practitioners. We are not rivals but workers building something whose final shape we are not able even to fantasize."

"Each of the Arts whose office is to refine, purify, adorn, embellish and grace life is under the patronage of a Muse, no god being found worthy to preside over them."

"The human face is the organic seat of beauty.... It is the register of value in development, a record of Experience, whose legitimate office is to perfect the life, a legible language to those who will study it, of the majestic mistress, the soul."

"Our own theological Church, as we know, has scorned and vilified the body till it has seemed almost a reproach and a shame to have one, yet at the same time has credited it with power to drag the soul to perdition."

"San Francisco, I believe, has the most disagreeable climate and locality of any city on the globe. If the winter be not unusually wet, there is some delightful weather to be enjoyed. If it be, you are flooded, and the rainy season closes to give place to what is miscalled summer — a season so cold that you require more clothing than you did in January; so damp with fogs and mists that you are penetrated to the very marrow; so windy that if you are abroad in the afternoon it is a continual struggle. Your eyes are blinded, your teeth set on edge, and your whole person made so uncomfortable by the sand that has insinuated itself through your clothing, that you could not conceive it possible to feel a sensation of comfort short of a warm bath and shower. . . . What sort of end the unfortunates, who spend their lives there, can expect under such circumstances, one does not easily foresee."

"(About Oprah Winfrey) She's very thin now, she's very cranky.....and very hungry!"

"(talking about fixating on one slot machine in Vegas) And I am playing my machine, and playing it, and playing it, and then finally I walk away, and then who shows up? Oh, you know who I'm talkin' about. That's right. That's right. As I'm walking away from my machine I've been on all night long, I actually hear her--and this is Old Lucky Asian Woman--you know her! You know what I'm talkin' about! I actually hear her on "my" machine going [in an Asian accent] "How much I win?! Oh, how much I win?! Oh, what happen? I never play before! It first time I play! Oh, I was walking by, I hit one time, I hit ten thousand dollar!" Bitter and angry! You know what I'm talkin' about! I'm like "give me my money, bitch! Those are my nickels!""

"Next thing I know, there a baby in my ter-litt!"

"Elin Nordegren could not be happier. How many girls here would trade places with her in a second? Where do I sign? First of all, she doesn't have to bang him (Tiger Woods) anymore! And she's probably gonna get, like $500 million! So they keep getting these pictures of her with the two kids, and she's just laughing all the way to the bank...haaa haaa haaa haaa...heugen fleugen heugen fleugen...hjorda fjorda hjorda fjorda..."

"Straight guys, this is your section, wake up (clap clap)."

"She wouldn't shake my hand! I said "C'mon, be a gentleman"."

"(About Elisabeth Hasselbeck) Really Hasselbeck, you're gonna throw down with me? I mean, really? If you're gonna come to the play yard, be prepared to fucking play!"

"(About controversy) What you guys get, that celebrities don't get, is that I live for this shit!"

"I am not gonna engage in a debate that Michael Jackson could be the biological father of any of those kids. I'm not havin it, not tonight. There's no way. Those kids are Whitey, Whitey McGee and Whitey McWhiterson!"

"(About Joe Jackson) First of all, he's sitting there with the pimp hat, and the tattooed drag queen eyebrows. Like maybe this whole time, he just has a separate drag character that he does at night.........named La Toya!"

"We didn't know that the (Jackson) family was as nuts as we're now finding out. Who knew that Michael was the normal one??"

"Do you know why I'm thin? Because I'm hungry ALL the time!"

"Because Oprah would be like "DID YOU DO COOOOCAAAAAAINE???""

"I'm saying that she (Whitney Houston) looks great for a "singer"......the way Courtney Love is a "singer"."

"I prefer big Oprah. I know Oprah wants to be skinny Oprah, but her head is too gigantic to fit on a skinny body. She has to accept that, like Kirstie Alley, she was meant to be...ahm....voluptuous!"

"(After Houston asks the audience in Central Park to sing along to a new, un-aired song) And the poor gays with the signs are like "We don't know that song yet....it's not even (on the radio)...go Diva....I mean, we don't know that song. I would like to...I don't...??""

"The first red flag? The crooked wig! That's how you know what level of awareness Whitney is at. Cause let me tell - you know her gay was straightening that wig to the bitter end. Making sure the part was in the right place. But you know what - when the (crack) pipe is shaking? It's hard to keep it on, when the pipe is all shaking."

"It was sweaty Whitney (Houston) in Central Park. She knew that park pretty well. Every bush!"

"Now the great thing about the current Britney (Spears) tour, is that it has a lot of fantastic dancing... and she doesn't get bogged down in any....ahm...singing!"

"(On William Shatner) He is like my favourite red-faced, bloated booze bag."

"I know I'm going to Hell. And I think I might see a few of you there. When I get there, it'll be like (waving) "Hi", "Hi", "Oh my God....Hi!""

"(On Paris Hilton) Believe it or not, I sort of know her a little bit. And based on that, I'm here to tell you that she is actually.......um.....retarded!"

"I would rather blow a guy in the bathroom at White Castle in between sliders...because I'm romantic!"

"(About gay cruising) My gays had to school me, and they said there's a whole system and a language to the tapping. One tap means you're a top, two means you're a bottom.....I don't know, it's very elaborate. Very elaborate."

"I don't give a fuck who's gay or straight in the Senate. Who cares? But it's always the one that they have all this tape of, saying gay people shouldn't have civil rights, gay people aren't the same, I would never want a gay person......those are always the ones trying to get a headjob at the fucking airport bathroom at the Minneapolis airport!"

"Wake up people! If you are gay and living in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, what the fuck else are you gonna do? You're gonna join the musical theatre. That's all you got in Pigeon Forge - there's no "bear" bar! This is it. Suit up.....put the wings on!"

"I was in the Oak Park theatre group. But we never had $90 000 to take an ad out! We were lucky if we had money for the glitter for the fucking poster!"

"As someone who was raised Catholic, and went to St Bernadine's; don't pull your Catholic kid-fucker bullshit with me, motherfuckers! I'm not scared of you. And I'm not havin it!"

"The 2007 Emmy Awards were a little too Cirque de Seacrest. I shouldn't say that about Ryan, she's a very good hostess."

"And then who comes along to save the day? A couple of tool-belt wearing, golf-loving, Dinah Shore weekend lesbians sent from heaven."

"I'm not wearing any pants and the lesbians are waiting!"

"I know you love her... you're gay and she's Celine Dion!"

"[Impersonating Celine) "Zis next song iz for all ze parents in zer audience, and also zer children"...(looks puzzled).... that's just everybody, right?"

"Everytime she walks out (on stage), she acts like she's shocked anyone showed up! Every night! As if every single day, at about 3 o'clock, she's like, "You know Rene, maybe tonight iz ze night zey do not come?""