A woman whose smile is open and whose expression is glad has a kind of beauty no matter what she wears.

Is it possible that my sons-in-law will do toilets? If we raise boys to know that diapers need to be changed and refrigerators need to be cleaned, there's hope for the next generation.

What other people think of me is not really my major concern in life. What other people think of what I write is another matter.

Many writers do write about their families and their immediate loved ones and love experiences, either as children or as adults. And very often people get offended by it.

I've told the same story twelve different ways, but I think that's just part of what writers do. Once may not be enough.

You need your freedom. You need to be able to do what you want to do as a journalist, as a person who's speaking for other women as you speak for yourself, and you make a choice. You have to be tough enough to take the consequences of that choice.

I think that certainly the artists of the '40s, '50s and '60s were fighting a very conformist society, which didn't give them enough space to live or create, and they were bucking all kinds of spoken and unspoken rules.