Female adolescence is - universally - an emotionally and psychologically intense period.

Every great culture has cared a lot, one way or another, about the fate of its girls.

To really love Joan Didion—to have been blown over by things like the smell of jasmine and the packing list she kept by her suitcase—you have to be female.

My mother was very involved with Cesar Chavez's work on behalf of the migrant farm workers in California.

Mothers ... would do anything to steer their daughter the right way. It is frustrating beyond measure for them when a daughter screams, 'You don't understand, and you'll never understand!' The mother stamps her foot in aggravation, but in this case the daughter is right: the mother doesn't understand. She merely remembers, and memory is separate from experience.

If you're a writer, you just keep following the path - keep going deeper and deeper into the things that interest you.

Marriage remains the most efficient engine of disenchantment yet invented.