I was born in ancient times at the end of the world in a patriarchal Catholic and conservative family. No wonder that by age five I was a raging feminist - although the term had not reached Chile yet so nobody knew what the heck was wrong with me.

It is folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity and indeed of every age in the world have passed through this fiery persecution.

The stars shall fade away the sun himself Grow dim with age and nature sink in years But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth Unhurt amidst the wars of elements The wrecks of matter and the crush of worlds.

I saw no African people in the printed and illustrated Sunday school lessons. I began to suspect at this early age that someone had distorted the image of my people. My long search for the true history of African people the world over began.

I have always felt that a woman has the right to treat the subject of her age with ambiguity until perhaps she passes into the realm of over ninety. Then it is better she be candid with herself and with the world.

Age is getting to know all the ways the world turns so that if you cannot turn the world the way you want you can at least get out of the way so you won't get run over.

Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. Everything can be had so dirt cheap that one begins to wonder whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid.

It is well for the world that in most of us by the age of thirty the character has set like plaster and will never soften again.

I think the biggest disease the world suffers from in this day and age is the disease of people feeling unloved. I know that I can give love for a minute for half an hour for a day for a month but I can give. I am very happy to do that I want to do that.

Better pass boldly into that other world in the full glory of some passion than fade and wither dismally with age.

Books were my pass to personal freedom. I learned to read at age three and soon discovered there was a whole world to conquer that went beyond our farm in Mississippi.

We prefer world law in the age of self-determination to world war in the age of mass extermination.

As human beings our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world - that is the myth of the atomic age - as in being able to remake ourselves.

We should so provide for old age that it may have no urgent wants of this world to absorb it from meditation on the next. It is awful to see the lean hands of dotage making a coffer of the grave.

A comfortable old age is the reward of a well-spent youth. Instead of its bringing sad and melancholy prospects of decay it would give us hopes of eternal youth in a better world.