Maybe when you meet the people you are supposed to meet you know it, without knowing it.

Besides, when you say you're a feminist it annoys the bigots and the old farts and the prissy ladies so much, it's kind of irresistible.

As great scientists have said and as all children know, it is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception, and compassion, and hope.

Virginity is now a mere preamble or waiting room to be got out of as soon as possible; it is without significance.

It is a real wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe.

I don't want to be a propagandist, no matter how good the cause. I want to tell stories. It's just that the stories have to square with my consciousness as a woman and my conscience as a human being.

Safety lies in catering to the in-group. We are not all brave. All I would ask of writers who find it hard to question the universal validity of their personal opinions and affiliations is that they consider this: Every group we belong to - by gender, sex, race, religion, age - is an in-group, surrounded by an immense out-group, living next door and all over the world, who will be alive as far into the future as humanity has a future. That out-group is called other people. It is for them that we write.