The more money women make, the less violence, the less sexual crimes against women. Everything horrific and misogynistic declines. But then what you're dealing with here is "What does it mean to be in love with people who are your equals?" And that's a very beautiful thing that we should cherish, but it's also incredibly tough in some ways.

You have two things happening: You have the cultural and economic reality of men falling apart and traditional masculinity falling apart.

Marriage is an an inherently contradictory state. It involves the fusion of two people into one thing. And it's also love, and it's a lot of work, and it's got glory in its drudgery.

The problem with the way we discuss gender is that it tends to be "Let's sympathize with women" or "Let's sympathize with men."

To me, there's two definitions of feminism. One is that you believe that women are equal human beings; that's not really a philosophy, it's just obvious. And the other is that you're actually fighting for women: you're promoting women and working towards the betterment of women.

Only idiots or snobs ever really thought less of 'genre books' of course. There are stupid books and there are smart books. There are well-written books and badly written books. There are fun books and boring books. All of these distinctions are vastly more important than the distinction between the literary and the non-literary.

Marriage is not one point of view: it's a constant back and forth over different perspectives - a healthy marriage, anyway.