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.

I am very interested in people trying to write because I don't have a big academic background at all.

When you have a peace movement that has an actual war, it's different from one that has wars that our country is not totally involved in. During the war in Vietnam, and to a lesser degree the wars in Central America where our country was directly involved, it was easier to organize.

You become a writer because you need to become a writer - nothing else.

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

Here I am in the garden laughing an old woman with heavy breasts and a nicely mapped face how did this happen well that's who I wanted to be at last a woman in the old style sitting stout thighs apart under a big skirt grandchild sliding on off my lap a pleasant summer perspiration that's my old man across the yard he's talking to the meter reader he's telling him the world's sad story how electricity is oil or uranium and so forth I tell my grandson run over to your grandpa ask him to sit beside me for a minute I am suddenly exhausted by my desire to kiss his sweet explaining lips.

Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life.