Ambivalence is a wonderful tune to dance to. It has a rhythm all its own.

Nothing quite has reality for me till I write it all down--revising and embellishing as I go. I'm always waiting for things to be over so I can get home and commit them to paper.

At certain historic moments, grandparents took on childrearing responsibilities. In many cultures, they still do. Chinese grandparents who are able to retire at 55 are seen all over Beijing bouncing grandbabies. In the United States, we can't afford to retire at 55.

You can't be creative and still be a good girl.

In a world where women work three times as hard for half as much, our achievement has been denigrated, both marriage and divorce have turned against us, our motherhood has been used as an obstacle to our success, our passion as a trap, our empathy for others as an excuse to underpay us.

There's another part of getting older that's just wonderful. Which is you see the way the stories turn out with peoples' lives.

Perhaps all artists were, in a sense, housewives: tenders of the earth household.