It came from a piece in which I said that a time will come when men and women will approach each other at eye level – an idea, and a phrase, to which… - Vivian Gornick

I wish to see every feminist say to herself: 'Yes, the patriarchy has taken my life from me, but also I have given it. I am not going to waste the rest of it in an avalanche of reproach. I am going to fight the patriarchy, but my real energy goes to the hard, drudging work of making myself human—as well as humane. Men may have taken my life from me—but they cannot give it back to me. Only I can do that, fighting inch by inch to reverse the emotional habits of a lifetime.'

Between what we know and what we cannot hope to know about how we come to be as we are lies an emotional dumping ground into which exceptional writers pour all the art they are capable of making.

Ultimately, our art is a reflection of the progress of our desires chained to our fears. The meaning of a social movement is that it rises directly out of a gut need to defeat the ascendancy of fear. That need becomes an idea which takes hold slowly, and slowly forces emotional—hence cultural and political—change.