As women got little crumbs of power, men began to act paranoid - as if we'd disabled them utterly. Do all women have to keep silent for men to speak? Do all women have to be legless for men to walk?

You must have a certain amount of maturity to be a poet. Seldom do sixteen-year-olds know themselves well enough.

In a way women are fleshier because of estrogen. It's hard for us to lose weight because when we get super skinny we don't ovulate. Women in camps during the Holocaust didn't menstruate and didn't ovulate. They were starving; they were terrified. Why emulate that condition? It's nonsensical to me.

Murky language means someone wants to pick your pocket.

I convinced myself that sadness and compromise were the ways of the world.

As a past president of the Writers Guild, I think women shouldn't write for free. Maybe you have to do it for a time, to make a reputation, but I think the idea of giving your work away is the beginning of authors not being able to make a living.

If there's anything the world disdains more than uppity young women, it's uppity old women. Dying young has always been a woman's best career move.