Life Ain't The Movies.

The Bottom Line Is I'm Writing To Save The Dead. I'm Writing To Save The People I Have Lost, Some Of Whose Bodies Are Still Walking Around.

Two Or Three Things I Know For Sure, And One Of Them Is That If We Are Not Beautiful To Each Other, We Cannot Know Beauty In Any Form.

If I Could Have Found What I Needed At Thirteen, I Would Not Have Lost So Much Of My Life Chasing Vindication Or Death. Give Some Child, Some Thirteen-year Old, The Hope Of The Remade Life. Tell The Truth. Write The Story That You Were Always Afraid To Tell. I Swear To You There Is Magic In It.

I Was Born In 1949, And By The Time I Was 10, I Figured Out That My Hope Chest Was Not Aimed In The Same Direction Everybody Else's Was. And That Life Was Going To Be Very, Very Complicated. And That I Could Either Be Provocative And Declamatory, Or Shy, Retiring And Scared.

I Put On The Page A Third Look At What I've Seen In Life - The Reinvented Experience Of A Cross-eyed Working-class Lesbian, Addicted To Violence, Language And Hope, Who Has Made The Decision To Live, Is Determined To Live, On The Page And On The Street, For Me And Mine.