Some women and men seem to need each other.
In retrospect, perhaps the biggest reason my mother was cared for but not helped for twenty years was the simplest: Her functioning was not that necessary to the world.
They would say well there’s always been wars, men have always beaten women. But it isn’t true in all cultures. It doesn’t have to be true. And the first step is imaging.
What would happen if we listened to children as much as we talked to them?
For much of the female half of the world, food is the first signal of our inferiority. It lets us know that our own families may consider female bodies to be less deserving, less needy, less valuable.
You’re a unique person. You should do what you’re suited to do. We all should. It’s the only way to be happy. That pressure is all outside. It’s external.
There is always one true inner voice. Trust it.
People waste more time waiting for someone to take charge of their lives than they do in any other pursuit.
Nature doesn’t move in a straight line, and as part of nature, neither do we.
Of course, we can change. We’re very adaptable. But it takes a while.
Proust’s tea cake has nothing on one hour in a college dorm.
Power in this country is often like hemophilia; it passes through women and then men get it.
I think one of the great innovations of sexual harassment law was that it did not use the word “consent.” It used the word “welcome.”
Language can’t solve everything, of course, but it does carry our dreams and our ideas.
We have to imagine change before we can begin to move toward it.
I never expected to be even busier at 81, and doing more of what I love, than when I was 30.
It’s especially ridiculous to think you have to be successful when you’re so young. You should be able to adventure and not worry so much about achievement.
You can hardly open a newspaper without seeing that a woman has been killed by a man for clearly gender-related reasons.
One of the main problems of our time is that men are deprived of their human qualities that are wrongly called feminine, and women are deprived of their human qualities that are wrongly called masculine.
I think we acquire habits of mind when we’re little, and I lived in the future because I was always imagining being a grown-up, when I could get out.