Eve Ensler

I was worried about my own vagina. It needed a context of other vaginas-- a community, a culture of vaginas. There's so much darkness and secrecy surrounding them-- like the Bermunda Triangle.

Three of the ten principles governing the City of Joy are (a) tell the truth, (b) stop waiting to be rescued, and (c) give away what you want the most.

I finally know the difference between pleasing and loving, obeying and respecting. It has taken me so many years to be okay with being different, and with being this alive, this intense. (xxvi)

I have always been obsessed with naming things. If I could name them, I could tame them. They could be my friends.

Go so far away that you stop being afraid of not coming back.

My vagina was green water, soft pink fields, cow mooing sun resting sweet boyfriend touching lightly with soft piece of blond straw.There is something between my legs. I do not know what it is. I do not know where it is. I do not touch. Not now. Not anymore. Not since.My vagina was chatty, can't wait, so much, so much saying, words talking, can't quit trying, can't quit saying, oh yes, oh yes.Not since I dream there's a dead animal sewn in down there with thick black fishing line. And the bad dead animal smell cannot be removed. And its throat is slit and it bleeds through all my summer dresses.My vagina singing all girl songs, all goat bells ringing songs, all wild autumn field songs, vagina songs, vagina home songs.Not since the soldiers put a long thick rifle inside me. So cold, the steel rod canceling my heart. Don't know whether they're going to fire it or shove it through my spinning brain. Six of them, monstrous doctors with black masks shoving bottles up me too. There were sticks, and the end of a broom.My vagina swimming river water, clean spilling water over sun-baked stones over stone clit, clit stones over and over.Not since I heard the skin tear and made lemon screeching sounds, not since a piece of my vagina came off in my hand, a part of the lip, now one side of the lip is completely gone.My vagina. A live wet water village. My vagina my hometown.Not since they took turns for seven days smelling like feces and smoked meat, they left their dirty sperm inside me. I became a river of poison and pus and all the crops died, and the fish.My vagina a live wet water village.They invaded it. Butchered it and burned itdown.I do not touch now.Do not visit.I live someplace else now.I don't know where that is.

Stop shoving things up me. Stop shoving and stop cleaning it up. My vagina doesn't need to be cleaned up. It smells good already. Not like rose petals. Don't try to decorate.

It became a kind of passion. Discovering the key, unlocking the vagina's mouth, unlocking this voice, this wild song.

If overthrowing some five thousand years of patriarchy seems like a big order, just focus on celebrating each self-respect step along the way

Slowly, it dawned on me that nothing was more important than stopping violence toward women__hat the desecration of women indicated the failure of human beings to honor and protect life and that this failing would, if we did not correct it, be the end of us all. I do not think I am being extreme. When you rape, beat, maim, mutilate, burn, bury, and terrorize women, you destroy the essential life energy of the planet. You force what is meant to be open, trusting, nurturing, creative, and alive to be bent, infertile, and broken.

Women secretly love to talk about their vaginas. They get very excited, mainly because no one has ever asked them before.

Poor women suffer terrible sexual violence that goes unreported. Because of their social class, these women do not have access to therapy or other methods of healing. Their repeated abuse ultimately eats away at their self-esteem, driving them to drugs, prostitution, AIDS, and in many cases, death.

I am going to stop mainlining my life force / Into your self-esteem: / Air pump girl blowing up boy rubber ball / You can stay flat and go nowhere by yourself

...to speak of them out loud, to speak of their hunger and pain and loneliness and humour, to make them visible so that can not be ravaged in the dark without great consequence.

I want to read so I can read the Koran read the signs in the street know the number of the bus I'm supposed to take when I one day leave this house.

Looking at it, I started crying. Maybe it was knowing that I had to give up the fantasy, the enormous life consuming fantasy , that someone or something was going to do this for me _ the fantasy that someone was coming to lead my life, to choose direction, to give me orgasms.

The heart is capable of sacrifice. So is the vagina. The heart is able to forgive and repair. It can change it's shape to let us in. It can expand to let us out. So can the vagina. It can ache for us and stretch for us, die for us and bleed and bleed us into this difficult, wondrous world. So can the vagina. I was there in the room. I remeber.

It seems to me there's this tyranny that's not accidental or incidental, to make women feel compelled to look like somebody they're not. I think the effort is being made to get us to turn our time and attention to this instead of important political issues.