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.

No metaphor reinvents the job of the nurture of children except to muddy or mock.

The wrong word is like a lie jammed inside the story.

I didn't write any fiction until I was past thirty.

All that is really necessary for survival of the fittest, it seems, is an interest in life, good, bad or peculiar.

If you're old and you're healthy and you're active - I don't mean you have to be politically active - if you remain interested in other people and the world, then you live as well as your health will allow.

I didn't intend to become a short-story writer. I became one because I finished a couple of short stories and realized that's what I wanted to do and could do with children and with all the other things in my life.