I wasn't even in a newspaper office where I was getting assignments in competition with other people. I remember earlier, though, that I knew a young woman who had been published in the New Yorker, and I was so jealous of her. It wasn't exactly a personal competition. I just envied that accomplishment.

I do not like to write - I like to have written.

The uncomfortable truth seems to be that the amount of talk by women has been measured less against the amount of men's talk than against the expectation of female silence.

Women may be the one group that grows more radical with age.

The first resistance to social change is to say it's not necessary.

I can only tell you the kind of power I want, which is the power to persuade. But I do not want the power to tell other people what to do. Persuade assumes that the other person is going to make the decision. Especially as a writer and an activist, I want the power to put ideas and possibilities out there, but I understand that they will only work if they are freely chosen, so I don't want the power to dictate or to force the choice, ever.

Now, we've made the revolutionary discovery that children have two parents. A decade ago even the kindly Dr. Spock held mothers solely responsible for children.