After a while you tame your interior monsters, it's only natural. I don't mean that it ever stops; but it stops mattering. (p8) - Joanna Russ

You have to have conventions and rigid symbols and patterns before you can upset them.

The mystery stories are very interesting because again, often the ones that women write are as good as or not as good as the ones the guys write, but the women write about personalities, about characters, and what is character-driven. The men tend not to; they are more comfortable apparently with technical problems. I think the best writers are the kind who do both at the same time.

middle-class women, although taught to value established forms, are in the same position as the working class: neither can use established forms to express what the forms were never intended to express (and may very well operate to conceal).