I once asked a young dissertation writer whether her suddenly grayed hair was due to ill health or personal tragedy; she answered: “It was the footnotes”.

[T]here is one and only one way to possess that in which we are defective, therefore that which we need, therefore that which we want. Become it.

Ignorance is not bad faith. But persistence in ignorance is.

The trouble with men is that they have limited minds. That's the trouble with women, too.

Sit a man on his ass with nothing to do but eat and the first thing that goes is his mind. It never fails.

I'm not a girl. I'm a genius.

Long before I became a feminist in any explicit way, I had turned from writing love stories about women in which women were losers, and adventure stories about men in which the men were winners, to writing adventure stories about a woman in which the woman won. It was one of the hardest things I ever did in my life.