Despair, when not the response to absolute physical and moral defeat is, like war, the failure of imagination.

To become a token woman - whether you win the Nobel Prize or merely get tenure at the cost of denying your sisters - is to become something less than a man... since men are loyal at least to their own world-view, their laws of brotherhood and self-interest.

The words are purposes./The words are maps./I came to see the damage that was done/and the treasures that prevail.

Responsibility to yourself means that you don't fall for shallow and easy solutions-it means that you refuse to sell your talents and aspirations short.

Writers matter in a society to the extent that we can help that society hear its unvoiced longing, encounter its erased and disregarded selves, break with complacency, numbness, despair.

If we had time and no money, living by our wits, what story would you tell?

There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep and still be counted as warriors.