Business leaders love the humanities because they know that to innovate you need more than rote knowledge. You need a trained imagination.

A person in torment is not going to give you anything.

As human beings, we ought to be vulnerable. We shouldn't try to say that we can be self-sufficient or do everything that's necessary for a good life on our own, because we need other people.

As we tell stories about the lives of others, we learn how to imagine what another creature might feel in response to various events. At the same time, we identify with the other creature and learn something about ourselves.

When I came to Harvard, there were no tenured women except one, who was in a chair reserved for a woman. It's still an uphill battle, and I encountered great sexism in parts of my career, but I have to say that things are a lot better than they used to be. There are many women today doing wonderful work all over the academy.

The great tragedy in the new feminist theory in America is the loss of a sense of public commitment.... Hungry women are not fed by this, battered women are not sheltered by it, raped women do not find justice in it, gays and lesbians do not achieve legal protections through it.

I think the obstacle for women is that their lives are intertwined with the lives of men. Change at the very deepest level of one's daily life and one's being is required if women are to be really equal.