List of Eve Ensler Quotes

Terence Mckenna Says, "the Culture Is Not Your Friend." I Am Not Sure We Can Change This Culture. But I Think We Can Rise Above It And Create A New World. That's Why I So Deeply Believe In Alternative Spaces. That's Why I Believe In The Power Of Art And Activism.

Some Days I Would Get So Exhausted, Nauseous, In Pain - Just From Going Back Through Things. It's Almost As If I Had The Experience And Then The Meta-experience.

With The Gulf Spill, I Absolutely Merged In The Time When I Had That Infection. I Couldn't Get Out Of The Gulf Spill. There Were So Many Similarities: The Drains And The Siphoning And The Tubes. And Also In The Way The Earth Was Hurt, The Ocean Was Bleeding. Remember The Video Cams Of The Oil Gushing? I Couldn't Stop Watching That.

I Think It Was A Realization Of This Cancer, An Understanding Of The Broader Implications Of What Cancer Is. The Greed, The Ravaging Of Lands And Seas For Profit, The Taking Of Things That Don't Belong To Us; What We've Done To The Environment In This Fast-paced, Careless Hunger. I Think All Of That Was Happening In My Body.

My Relationship To The Desecration Of The Earth Was Very Theoretical And Intellectual Until I Got Sick. I Could Never Watch Anything About Polar Bears Dying Or The Death Of Bees. There Were Certain Things I Knew I Couldn't Go Near Because They Were Too Devastating. But I Don't Think Until I Got Cancer Did I Get It In My Body, What Was Happening To The Earth. I Finally Went: "oh! Earth! Organism!"

But My Body Was Telling Its Story. I Have Read A Lot Of Stuff About Cancer. I Needed This Book. I Wish I'd Had This Book When I Had Cancer. I Wanted Someone To Be Talking To Me About "fart Floors." I Wanted Somebody Telling Me What It Was Like To Have A Colostomy Bag. I Felt So Alone. And If You're A Person Who's Been Traumatized By Past Abuse, It's So Potentially Re-traumatizing. You Slip Right Into "oh My God, This Is The Only Person This Has Happened To Before" Mentality: "i'm Especially Bad And I Have Especially Bad Cancer..."

People Didn't Feel So Much Shame Around It And That They Didn't Feel So Much Humiliation Around It. And The Other Thing That People Have Given Me A Lot Of Feedback About - Something I'm Very Excited About - Is All The Stuff Around Chemo As An "empathetic Warrior."

I Really Believe That Is Helping People. I've Been Talking To Oncologists About How We Can Re-frame And Re-think The Chemo Process, So It Becomes A Much More Spiritual, Psychological Journey. Where People Really Could Burn Away What Needs To Be Burned Away. It's Happening Anyway. Why Not Frame It In A Psychological Way Where It Can Serve As A Transformation?

I'd Stop Calling It "chemotherapy." I'd Call It "transformational Juice." Infusion Suites Would Become "transformational Suites" Or "journey Rooms."

Anorexia Was My Attempt To Have Control Over My Body And Manipulate My Body And Starve My Body And Shape My Body. It Was Not A Very Good Relationship. It Was The Sort Of Relationship My Father Had To My Body. It Was A Tyrannical, "you'll Do What I Tell You" Relationship.

Then There Was Sex, Which, For Me, Was Such A Need. When I Was Younger, I Had A Need To Have Sex With Everyone. I Don't Know Where That Was Coming From, But There Was Such A Need To Connect Physically - Obviously, For Me To Connect Physically To Myself. There Were Times, Like I Say In The Book, Where You Lay On Top Of Me, When You Push Me Down, When You're Inside Me.

There Were Momentary Visitations. I Was A Visitor, Not An Inhabitant. I Think I Say That At The Beginning Of The Book: "i Have Made Visits To The Earth In My Body, But It's Always Been As A Visitor."