When I was growing up, you were supposed to marry and therefore didn't plan ahead. Planning ahead is one of the few reliable measures of class in the sense that rich people plan for generations forward and poor people plan for Saturday night, and by that measure, women have been lower class. We were less likely to plan ahead because we're more likely to think that who we marry and our children are going to dictate our plans.

I think that part of everybody's success is due to their looks, but it just works in different ways. If you're whatever society calls attractive, then people say that you got ahead because of your looks-especially if you're a woman. If you're whatever society says is not attractive, then they say you got ahead because you're compensating, you couldn't get a man or whatever. So everybody pays the same penalty for the fact that women are assessed for their outsides rather than for what's in our heads and our hearts.

You can't do it all. No one can have two full-time jobs, have perfect children and cook three meals and be multi-orgasmic 'til dawn ... Superwoman is the adversary of the women's movement.

Progress is not automatic, it depends on what we do every day. So any statement of ownership of our own bodies, however that occurs in our individual lives or our community or our collective lives, is crucial.

A woman reading Playboy feels a little like a Jew reading a Nazi manual.

God knows (She knows) that women try.

I haven't been in a job situation in which I was competing with other women. As a writer, you're more likely to be treated as an individual.