Good talkers are people who use interesting language and have a lot of energy in speech and who also listen.

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

Literature, fiction, poetry, whatever, makes justice in the world. That's why it almost always has to be on the side of the underdog.

My family were Russian Jews. They got you to read as soon as you could. And then assumed you would read a lot. People didn't really tell stories but they were good talkers. That's important for a writer, to hear speakers.

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

My vocabulary is adequate for writing notes and keeping journals but absolutely useless for an active moral life.

If you're feminist, it means that you've noticed that male ownership of the direction of female lives has been the order of the day for a few thousand years, and it isn't natural.