The original languages didn't even have he and she. They didn't have concepts of masculine and feminine. People were people. And the whole idea was that we were in a circle together, not in a hierarchy together.

I was rescued by librarians. It was librarians who said 'maybe you would like to read The Hardy Boys as well as Nancy Drew.' It is true for me, as for so many countless others, that librarians saved my life, my internal life.

Before feminism, work was largely defined as what men did or would do. Thus, a working woman was someone who labored outside the home for money, masculine-style.

If you have two groups of people and you say one is inferior to the other, which is a lie, then the only way to maintain the lie is through violence or the threat of violence.

When the past dies, there is mourning, but when the future dies our imaginations are compelled to carry it on.

All biographers, no matter how sympathetic, end up using their subjects as mirrors to figure themselves out. I don't want to be anyone's mirror.

One of the main problems of our time is that men are deprived of their human qualities that are wrongly called feminine, and women are deprived of their human qualities that are wrongly called masculine.