Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions. - Joyce Carol Oates

... her Quaker instincts led her to apologize for wrongs not her own to minimize conflict.

"My dis-interest in what people speak of as "women's problems," "women's literature." Have women a special sensibility? No. There are individuals uniquely talented & uniquely equipped to interpret the complex symbolism of the world but they are certainly not determined by gender. The very idea is astonishing. [...] Energy, talent, vision, insight, compassion, the ability to stay with a single work for long periods of time, the ability to be faithful (to both one's writing and one's beloved) — these have nothing to do with gender. [...] The sensibility of a Virginia Woolf, for instance. It's her own, it's uniquely hers. Not because she is a "female" but because she is, or was, Virginia Woolf. Not more sensitive than Henry James or Proust or James Joyce, consequently not more "feminine" in the narrow & misleading sense people use that term today....But then I suppose critics must have something to write about. [...]"

The fundamental truth of my life whether in fact it was truth or a burlesque of truth: when a man wants you, you’re safe.