You write to suit some sense in yourself and trust that that will resonate with a certain wider readership.

I would be the most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.

We don't do ambivalence well in America. We do courage of our convictions. We do might makes right. Ambivalence is French. Certainty is American.

If you raise an intelligent girl she will become a feminist because of the facts of her own life. Raising feminist boys is more difficult. Raising egalitarian boys. One of the reasons you have to raise them that way is because it's better for them.

I would even go to Washington, which is saying something for me, just to glimpse Jane Q. Public, being sworn in as the first female president of the United States, while her husband holds the Bible and wears a silly pill box hat and matching coat.

You write to suit some sense in yourself and trust that that will resonate with a certain wider readership.

Fashions in bigotry come and go. The right thing lasts.