Does feminist mean large unpleasant person who'll shout at you or someone who believes women are human beings. To me it's the latter, so I sign up

It used to be that your bloodlines dictated who you were. But the U.S. became the land of the self-made man, in which not only did you make a fortune but you could make up everything else about yourself as well. You move into a new town with a spurious pedigreed background and you just make yourself up.

At the very least we want a witness. We can't stand the idea of our own voices falling silent finally, like a radio running down.

The Three of them were beautiful, in the way all girls of that age are beautiful. It can't be helped, that sort of beauty, nor can it be conserved; it's a freshness, a plumpness of the cells, that's unearned and temporary, and that nothing can replicate. None of them was satisfied with it, however; already they were making attempts to alter themselves into some impossible, imaginary mould, plucking and pencilling away at their faces. I didn't blame them, having done the same once myself.

Some cleric putting a match to her. /Neither of them looks happy about it. /Once lit, she'll burn like a book, /like a book that was ever finished, /like a locked-up library.

A voice is a human gift; it should be cherished and used, to utter fully human speech as possible. Powerlessness and silence go together.

When I was 16 I started publishing all kinds of things in school magazines. My main feedback came from my English teacher, Miss Bessie B. Billings, who said, 'I can't understand this at all, dear, so it must be good.