They may recognize themselves in what you're writing, and then they have to say, "Well, she doesn't see me as I see myself." All a writer has is her own experience, and that experience comes out of human relationships.

I was never an activist, in the sense that I didn't really join a lot of organizations. I wasn't out in the streets. But what I did become was a writer. My activism was in writing.

Papa's love did indeed have wondrous properties: it not only compensated for her boredom and anxiety, it was the cause of her boredom and anxiety.

I hated being "Mrs." from the first second each time. I didn't know why. All I knew was how uncomfortable it felt. I hated being one half of a couple, without understanding that it wasn't the husband or the man I hated, it was situation, the identity.

Being a housewife is an illegitimate profession... The choice to serve and be protected and plan towards being a family-maker is a choice that shouldn't be. The heart of radical feminism is to change that

Just as once upon a time you could make the experience of religion or nature a great metaphor, so now it is with love. It's just not the kind of thing you can put at the center of a work of literature and have it really reveal us to ourselves.

The older I grow, the more I realize how unfit we are for relationships. We are all such antagonists. It's part of the human condition to be deeply unfaithful to constancy. I do believe that.