What happened to the writer is not what matters; what matters is the large sense that the writer is able to make of what happened.

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

For the integrated human being there is no past: there is only the continual transformation of original experience.

We cannot depend on change, but we can depend on surprise. However, we cannot always depend on surprise either. This keeps us on our toes.

What feminism did was make clear for me how much I longed for clarity. I got married twice, each time in a fog. I had so many complicated feelings I couldn't understand.

What Independence Has Come to Mean to Me: The Pain of Solitude. The Pleasure of Self-Knowledge

When the whole world is writing letters, it's easy to lap into the quiet within, tell the story of an hour, keep alive the narrating inner life. To be alone in the presence of one's thought is not a value, only a common practice.