Whatever a scientist is doing - reading, cooking, talking, playing - science thoughts are always there at the edge of the mind. They are the way the world is taken in; all that is seen is filtered through an everpresent scientific musing.

Psychoanalysis showed me that I might be neurotic because I was a girl but, as Chekhov might have put it, I alone had to squeeze the slave out of myself, drop by drop.

It seems that fiction no longer produces work that makes one feel the human condition deeply.

Feminism gave me a way to see myself in culture, in society, in history, and that was very important.

for me, the beauty of feminism is that it is a social and political movement that has redefined the power and obligation of the self: self-possession and self-regulation as a tool for social reform.

Adorable in her not-very-bright submissiveness, charming in her childlike delight in shiny floors, even forgivable in her spiteful competition for the whitest, brightest wash, Madison Avenue's girl-next door is all the American male could wish for: unless, by some miscarriage, he should fancy human companionship.

Writing enters into us when it gives us information about ourselves we are in need of *at the time that we are reading.* How obvious the thought seems once it has been articulated! As with love, politics, or friendship: readiness is all.