Write what will stop your breath if you don’t write.

I read a lot. I liked a tremendous number of poets and writers. The person whose work I liked the most was Joyce.

That heartbreaking moment when you finish an amazing book, and you are forced to return to reality.

I do lots of reading and speaking at many universities about literature and also about politics, which is as much a part of my life as the literature.

People will sometimes say, "Why don't you write more politics?" And I have to explain to them that writing the lives of women IS politics.

Sometimes before people know what they're saying, they already love the language.

The women's movement was coming, but I didn't know it in 1956-1957, when I began to write.