Coming out, all the way out, is offered more and more as the political solution to our oppression. The argument goes that, if people could see just how many of us there are, some in very important places, the negative stereotype would vanish overnight. ...It is far more realistic to suppose that, if the tenth of the population that is gay became visible tomorrow, the panic of the majority of people would inspire repressive legislation of a sort that would shock even the pessimists among us.

Love is the terrible secret people are suspected of unless they're married, then one always suspects they don't.

Conventions, like clichés, have a way of surviving their own usefulness.

Knowledge is a collective enterprise. Without it understanding is impossible. Ignorance is too often a murderous vulnerability.

I had always said to myself that forty was the cut off point of my apprenticeship which may for some people sound like a very long one, but the novel as art is a middle-aged art.

The message of women's liberation is that women can love each other and ourselves against our degrading education.

The kinds of good friends I have are people who are perfectly willing to have me say I'll see them in six months, and live right next door.