When a baby first looks at you...when it laughs that deep, unselfconscious gurgle; or when it cries and you pick it up and it clings sobbing to you...then you are-happy is not the precise word-filled.

Men seem unable to feel equal to women: they must be superior or they are inferior

The same men who are blind and deaf to feminism are acutely sensitive to what threatens their dominance and privilege.

One thing that makes art different from life is that in art things have a shape... it allows us to fix our emotions on events at the moment they occur, it permits a union of heart and mind and tongue and tear.

If you ask me what I believe in today, I believe in feminism. I believe that all human beings are equal. I believe that no one has the right to authority over anyone else. Feminism has to do with everything in the world, a vision of how the world can be. I have great doubts about Utopias, but I just keep on thinking there is a better way to live than the way we live now.

Survival is an art. It requires the dulling of the mind and the senses, and a delicate attunement to waiting, without insisting on precision about just what it is you are waiting for.

you can't equate passive dependent power with assertive power because the dependent kind isn't fun, it doesn't give you a kick, it just allows you to survive.