"It takes you in vivid words and pictures on a tour of the underground world of the shopping bag lady. You experience the tragedy, desolation and bizarre humor of this group. This book may shock you. Its photographs may make you want to turn your head; but it will not bore you. Here at last is the definitive book on this tragic urban problem."

— Shopping Bag Ladies of New York

"Maggie always had goofy friends, and she was always surrounded by animals - cats, dogs. In Tudor City, where Maggie once had an apartment on the 27th floor, it was birds - parakeets, pigeons, etc... - hundreds of birds, each with names. Problems arose when she stuffed up the drain pipes to create a birdbath on the fire escape terrace which overlooked The Daily News Building. Then one day she took a stepladder and climbed up to the chimney where she stood on top of a smoke stack, locked her arm on her hip and cocked her body and shouted, "Here I am". Then she spread out her arms like a scarecrow and let the birds perch all over her."

— Greg Cogan, Maggies's brother

"When I went out to interview and photograph women in the fall of 1997, I discovered both how much and how little has changed. Although there are more shelters and services, homelessness remains a crucial problem, and the number of younger women and girls living in the streets is growing. Drug addiction, sexual abuse, domestic violence, mental illness, fractured families, poverty - so many of the problems that forced women into the streets a generation ago are stil raging."

— Ms. Magazine March/April 1998