I very much dislike the word "race," and I never use it. I use the word "racist." Race is not a fact. There is only one race: human. Skin color is less than 2 percent of the DNA.

Women have the right to say: this is surface, this falsifies reality, this degrades.

It is distraction, not meditation, that becomes habitual; interruption, not continuity; spasmodic, not constant toil.

The clock talked loud. I threw it away, it scared me what it talked.

It's hard for me to talk about the terrible things that have happened in my lifetime because they didn't need to be.

Better mankind born without mouths and stomachs than always to worry about money to buy, to shop, to fix, to cook, to wash, to clean.

Compared to men writers of like distinction and years of life, few women writers have had lives of unbroken productivity, or leave behind a 'body of work.' Early beginnings, then silence; or clogged late ones (foreground silences); long periods between books (hidden silences); characterize most of us.