to be “against war” has come to seem too easy a stance. War exists in a texture of possession and deprivation, economic and religious dogmas, racism,… - Adrienne Rich

To become a token woman—whether you win the Nobel Prize or merely get tenure at the cost of denying your sisters—is to become something less than a man … since men are loyal at least to their own world-view, their laws of brotherhood and self-interest.

A new century, even a new technology, doesn't of itself produce newness. It is live human beings, looking in all directions, who will do this.

we teachers used to talk a lot about who fails the teacher or the student-when you have a classroom situation which is rigged entirely against the student, or in which the teacher is too ignorant to teach. Not ignorant of grammar, but ignorant of the students, ignorant of their culture. So, I was thinking very much about our failures, the map of our failures, we who consider ourselves so possessed of language, so articulate.