Luke’s Reviews > Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places > Status Update

"But you and I have learned to use the mother tongue only at home or safe among friends, and many men learn not to speak it at all. They're taught that there's no safe place for them."

-BRYN MAWR COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS (1986)

"There is no such thing as a moral filter that lets good books through and keeps bad books out."

-'WHOSE LATHE?' (1984)

"Success is somebody else's failure. Success is the American Dream we can keep dreaming because most people in most places, including thirty million of ourselves, live wide awake in the terrible reality of poverty. No, I do not wish you success. I don't even want to talk about it. I want to talk about failure."

-'A LEFT-HANDED COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS' (1983)