If my campaign is not in the debate, we will not have a real discussion of the emergency of climate change and why in fact we need a Green New Deal type national mobilization at the scale of a wartime mobilization in order to address this emergency.

If my campaign is not in the debate, we will not be talking about how we really fix this problem of endless and expanding war, why we need to cut the military budget by 50%, why we need to bring back our troops scattered overseas, the police force of the world, in over a hundred countries, something like eight hundred bases, but who's counting, why we need to basically bring those troops home and why we need to stop this policy of regime change, these wars on terror, which only create more terror. This needs to be debated.

If my brother and I wanted money in our pockets, we had to get jobs -- my first was at 15, at Burger King.

If my brain can ttell the difference between noise and signal, my heart cannot.

If my boyfriend finds me sexy, then I don't need that kind of male attention from anyone else.

If my boy had perished in a Nazi compound, I could never have gone on living. I would have killed myself.

If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come.

If my books can help children become readers, then I feel I have accomplished something important.

If my books appear to a reader to be oversimplified, then you shouldn't read them: You're not the audience!

If my body is enslaved, still my mind is free.

If my body can fall into the background for just a second, maybe people will start listening to what I have to say.

If my baby don't love me no more, I know her sister will.

If my attitude be on of fear, not faith, about the one who has disappointed me; if I say Just what I expected, if a fall occurs, then I know nothing of Calvary Love.

If my attention is wandering, there is somewhere it wants to go, so obviously it does not want to be where I am holding it in the name of some self-styled obligation.

If my assistant goes off and becomes successful, and people want to work with him, I'd take that as a compliment that I'd trained them well.

If my art has nothing to do with people's pain and sorrow, what is 'art' for?

If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions.

If my aim is to prove I am 'enough,' the project goes on to infinity-because the battle was already lost on the day I conceded the issue was debatable.

If my accomplishments frighten someone, it's nothing to do with me -- that's to do with them. But the men who are in my life see me as a person -- as a woman -- not as a character I've played.