"All men are rapists and that's all they are. They rape us with their eyes, their laws, and their codes."

"My books are water; those of the great geniuses are wine - everybody drinks water."

"Nothing is ever simple. What do you do when you discover you like parts of the role you're trying to escape?"

"Men's need to dominate women may be based in their own sense of marginality or emptiness; we do not know its root, and men are making no effort to discover it."

"One thing that makes art different from life is that in art things have a shape... it allows us to fix our emotions on events at the moment they occur, it permits a union of heart and mind and tongue and tear."

"To nourish children and raise them against odds is in any time, any place, is more valuable than to fix bolts in cars or design nuclear weapons."

"Men stumble over pebbles, never over mountains."

"Not many men have both good fortune and good sense."

"'I hate discussions of feminism that end up with who does the dishes,' she said. So do I. But at the end, there are always the damned dishes."

"When they kept you out it was because you were black; when they let you in, it is because you are black. That's progress?"

"Anyone determined to find another person or group inferior can always find whole lists of grounds that demonstrate inferiority because we are all inferior to the ideals of humanness we have erected."

"Men seem unable to feel equal to women: they must be superior or they are inferior."

"Well, love is insanity. The ancient Greeks knew that. It is the taking over of a rational and lucid mind by delusion and self-destruction. You lose yourself, you have no power over yourself, you can't even think straight."

"Oh, God, why don't I remember that a little chaos is good for the soul?"

"Fear is a question. What are you afraid of and why? Our fears are a treasure house of self-knowledge if we explore them."

"Nature is inside art as its content, not outside as its model."

"Whatever they may be in public life, whatever their relations with men, in their relations with women, all men are rapists and that's all they are. They rape us with their eyes, their laws, their codes."