When you handle books all day long, every new one is a friend and a temptation.

No book that is written for an external purpose is going to be a passionately felt book for the writer or the reader. I don't see the point in doing that.

Sometimes people damage paintings or sculpture because they love it. They throw their arms around a statue in a fit of hysterical passion and it falls over.

Recently abandoned women can be complicated.

As you know, human history is full of evil deeds, and maybe we ought to think of them with tears, not fascination.

In the end, I always act from the heart, even if I also value reason and tradition. I wish I could explain why, but I don't know.

It's a shame for women's history to be all about men--first boys, then other boys, then men men men. It reminds me of the way our school history textbooks were all about wars and elections, one war after another, with the dull periods of peace skimmed over whenever they occurred. (Our teachers deplored this and added extra units about social history and protest movements, but that was still the message of the books.)