We've got to believe in our beautiful impossible blueprints.

That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.

There are many feminists who work in the media, and they think that feminism is very important. It is in their own lives, but mostly feminism has had an impact among privileged women in the advanced Western countries. For the most part, it hasn't begun to touch the lives of poor and working women in the Third World, and that distresses me.

Whenever I met anyone who knew anything, I would bore them stiff until they told me what they knew.

Borrowing is not much better than begging; just as lending with interest is not much better than stealing.

It is the mark of great people to treat trifles as trifles and important matters as important.

I don't think San Francisco needs defending. I never meet anyone who doesn't love the place, Americans or others.