I think men have always been afraid of women's sexuality, and the restrictions they put on women testify to that.

I am against censorship. I prefer the chaos of uncontrollable communication of all sorts to selective banning of certain materials. I do not think human beings can be trusted to be above politics and to promote the common good. One group's common good is another group's evil.

My generation of young female writers discovered that we could dictate the form and content of our own fiction.

As long as I'm facing the right direction, it doesn't matter the size of my steps.

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.

The most important education you get is your own - the one you learn in solitude.

Mediocre prose might be read as an escape, might be spoken on television by actors, or mouthed in movies. But mediocre poetry did not exist at all. If poetry wasn't good, it wasn't poetry. It was that simple.