I came from a traditional immigrant family where education meant there were only a few valid paths: doctor or lawyer - and I didnt want to be either one.

Your war drum ain't / louder than this breath.

I've read too many books to believe what I am told.

War and tooth enameled salted lemon childhoods All colors run, none of us solid Don't look for shadow behind me I carry it within I live cycles of light and darkness

I do not know how bad a life has to break in order to kill. I have never been so hungry that I willed hunger. I have never been so angry as to want to control a gun over a pen. Not really. Even as a woman, as a Palestinian, as a broken human being. Never this broken.

The machine will grind you down, but the machine is not bigger than the imagination. Rome fell in a day. We know this.

Do not fear what has blown up. If you must, fear the unexploded.

I think of feminism as a socially just and imaginative world.