The truth has never been told about women in history: that everywhere man has gone woman has gone too, and what he has done she has done also. Women are ignorant of their own past and ignorant of their own importance in that past.

Iowans know themselves and what they are doing. They are doing well.

In a democracy such as ours the leading minds seldom achieve a place of permanent influence. And the men who sit in Congress or even in the White House are usually not our leading minds. They are not the thinkers. Still less have they time for reflection.

you seem to grieve for what is not so ... and there is no need to let your heart run ahead into evils that may never come.

If you start to revise before you've reached the end, you're likely to begin dawdling with the revisions and putting off the difficult task of writing.

Write a novel if you must, but think of money as an unlikely accident. Get your reward out of writing it, and try to be content with that.

I learned to distinguish between the two kinds of people in the world: those who have known inescapable sorrow and those who have not.