to know how to read is to light a lamp in the mind, to release the soul from prison, to open a gate to the universe." from Pavilion of Women page 292

I am an inveterate homemaker, it is at once my pleasure, my recreation, and my handicap. Were I a man, my books would have been written in leisure, protected by a wife and a secretary and various household officials. As it is, being a woman, my work has had to be done between bouts of homemaking.

Introversion, at least if extreme, is a sign of mental and spiritual immaturity.

Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that is where I renew my springs that never dry up.

endurance of inescapable sorrow is something which has to be learned alone. And only to endure is not enough. Endurance can be a harsh and bitter root in one's life, bearing poisonous and gloomy fruit, destroying other lives. Endurance is only the beginning. There must be acceptance and the knowledge that sorrow fully accepted brings its own gifts. For there is an alchemy in sorrow. It can be transmuted into wisdom, which, if it does not bring joy, can yet bring happiness.

For our democracy has been marred by imperialism, and it has been enlightened only by individual and sporadic efforts at freedom.

The basic discovery about any people is the discovery of the relationship between its men and its women.