Men weren't really the enemy - they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill.

Advice? I don't offer advice. Not my business. Your life is what you make it.

I can't point to any major episodes of sexual discrimination in my early life. But I was so aware of the crime, the shame that there was no use of my mother's ability and energy.

Having expressed the rage against the laws and conditions that oppressed them - maybe even excess anger in the beginning was directed at men they came in contact with, because it had been pent up too long - women now come from a new position of easier, more comfortable self-affirmation and empowerment. Women are given to tolerance and are more able to love. I hope it happens also to men.

Who knows what women can be when they are finally free to become themselves? Who knows what women's intelligence will contribute when it can be nourished without denying love?

I never set out to write a book to change women's lives, to change history. It's like, 'Who, me?' Yes, me. I did it. And I'm not that different from other women. Maybe my power and glory was that I could speak my truth as a woman and it was the truth of every woman.

It was the era that I later analyzed, the "feminine mystique" era, [when] "career woman" was a dirty word. And so I didn't want a career anymore. [But] I had to do something. So I started freelancing for women's magazines.